


I <3 NYC

by 1electricpirate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes: Incorrigible Flirt, Clint Barton: Human Trainwreck, Congratulations you're a meme, Lucky: Damn dog, M/M, Meet-Cute, SO MUCH BANTER, Steve and Tony are gross, a bottle of bourbon, and a little bit of superheroing, car-crash flirting, peak nyc, the MTA is a nightmare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 13:51:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12889269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1electricpirate/pseuds/1electricpirate
Summary: Clint Barton just wants to recover from four months of undercover work by spending a week in bed with his dog, eating pizza and catching up on Dog Cops. Unfortunately, the universe (and Steve Rogers) have other plans in mind.This is the story of how Clint Barton drinks some bourbon, saves the MTA, becomes a meme and somehow winds up making out with Bucky Barnes.





	I <3 NYC

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flawedamythyst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/gifts).



> Once upon an April, flawedamythyst was gonna have a birthday, so I was like: I know! I'll write her a fic for her birthday! That thing I saw on the internet that one time back in February would make a great prompt! This is gonna be awesome! 
> 
> And now, finally, eight months later, here it is! >.>
> 
> Thanks, flawedamythyst, for alpha _and_ beta reading this car-crash of a fic. It would make even _less_ sense without you. Happy birthday! Uh... or Christmas! Happy! Yes!

The Amazing Hawkeye is _not_ having a good day. 

Listen, you come back from four months of undercover work, aching and bleeding and with a couple bruised (but definitely not cracked) ribs to show for your efforts, all you want to do is spend the next week in bed with your dog, catching up on Dog Cops and eating pizza until you pop. 

In Clint’s experience, though, this is literally _never_ what you get. Instead, you get woken up after nowhere _near_ enough sleep by 70 pounds of dog leaping on your poor bruised-but-probably-almost-definitely-not-cracked ribs, the stench of dog piss rising from the corner of your bedroom stinging your nose, and your phone ringing off the hook. 

“I’m up, I’m up,” he tells Lucky, pushing the dog weakly off his chest. “I got it, Lucky. I’m awake.”

God, his head hurts. For once, Clint is damn glad he’s deaf. The ringtone might actually have split his poor, aching head open, if he’d been able to hear it. Even the vibrations are enough to hurt him. 

“Sonnuvabitch,” he mutters, wincing as he fumbles for his phone and squints at the screen: Seventeen missed calls. Jesus. He flicks phone into do-not-disturb mode and rubs at his face, trying to get his bearings. He must have slept for something like 12 hours. Jesus. No wonder Lucky wet the floor slash laundry pile. 

Lucky, idiot dog that he is, snuffles happily at Clint’s face. 

Dammit. He can’t stay mad at the damn dog. “Hey boy. Hey.” Lucky obligingly lowers his head for ear skritches, which Clint administers while squeezing his eyes shut and waiting for the pounding headache to subside from ‘literally earsplitting’ to ‘merely unbearable’. “Hey, howzabout next time you wake me up _before_ you piss the floor, huh boy?” 

Lucky licks a stripe up Clint’s cheek, which Clint will take as acquiescence to the terms. Or maybe the dog is just a damn idiot. 

“Alright, alright, boy, I’m up, I’m up. Get off, good dog, here we go.”

He manages to sit up without moaning in agony, but it’s a near thing. 

Painkillers. Painkillers and coffee. Painkillers and coffee and food. Yes.

Lucky trails him, tail wagging happily, as he hobbles down the stairs and makes his way to the kitchen. “Coffee first,” Clint tells him. “And then we’ll go outside.” The _last_ thing Clint wants to do is take the dog on a walk, even thinking about it makes his ribs ache and his head scream, but it’s not Lucky’s fault his toilet is outside. Poor dog is probably about to burst again, but it’s debatable whether Clint will be able to stand up for long enough to take him out if he doesn’t get some coffee into himself first. 

Not for the first time, he considers the merits of Stark Tower and the skygarden attached to the Avengers suite – not to mention Tony’s cleaning crew. He can’t even remember where his mop lives. Does he even have a mop? He’ll have to ask Kate. She knows these things. (Incidentally, she’s also the one that keeps his freezer stocked with pizza and his cupboard full of dog food and Pop-Tarts, for which he and Lucky are eternally grateful, and without which they would likely never eat). 

Clint rips into a pack of blueberry Pop-Tarts and stuffs one in his mouth, holding it there while he fumbles with the dog food. “Hey, pizza dog. Breakfast!”

Lucky bounds to his bowl and they both wolf down their breakfast with total disregard for crumbs or slobber. Clint sets the coffee to percolate and then stops for a breather, because that was A Lot of movement, and his head still feels like it might explode and his ribs hurt and he’s pretty sure he’s pulled one of the stitches in his thigh.

Fishing his phone out of his pocket, he sees he’s missed another call.

“Hey JARVIS, call your Master back, would you, before he shows up on my balcony?” 

A little red light flashes at him twice from the face of his phone – JARVIS code for “Yes, Sir,” – and Clint sets the cell on his counter where he can see the subtitles JARVIS projects for him while also keeping an eye on the progress of his coffee. (Not done yet, ugh, it’s _too slow_ , maybe he should let Stark at it after all, Avengers should _not_ have to wait this long for caffeine, it’s a hazard.) 

“Hey Legolas! What do your elf eyes see?” Tony’s captions are a jagged yellow robot font, which made Clint laugh the first time he saw them, but which now hurt his eyes a bit.

“Hey Tony,” Clint says. “You’re on caption.” 

“Yeah, I figured. Heard about your little... mishap. Uh, sorry about that.” 

Clint snorts. It was less a mishap and more an actual explosion. Luckily, his aids weren’t actually in his ears at the time, but _still_. “Is there a reason you tried to put teeny tiny arc reactors in my ears?” 

“I’m sure there was at the time. In my defence, you weren’t supposed to take that pair.” 

“You left them in my drawer! I thought they were for me!” 

“They were! Well, in theory. Sorry. I think Dummy put them away without checking with me, even though he knows he’s not supposed to do that. If it helps, he’s grounded.” 

Clint drags a hand across his face. Tony damn Stark and his damn bot children. Clint has about as hard a time staying mad at them as he does at Lucky. 

“You’ve still got your spares, though, right?” 

“Somewhere,” Clint says. “Unless Lucky ate them.” 

“Good, good.” Even in subtitles, Tony already sounds distracted. “Listen, swing by later today. I’ll give you the upgrades you were meant to have.” 

Clint considers the state of his ribs, the pounding in his head, the fact that he’s going to have to do laundry and scrub dog piss out of his floor. 

Yeah, no fucking way. 

“Ugh, Tony. I only just got back. I’m not human yet. I’ll come by later this week.”

There’s a pause, which JARVIS helpfully highlights with a pair of elongated ellipses: /…. …./

Something in Clint’s stomach sinks: Tony Stark pausing for breath _never_ bodes well. 

“What?” he asks. “What is it?” 

“It’s … here, hang on.” 

There’s another pause, just one ellipsis this time, and then the captions change: Arial font-face in a bright, bold, patriotic blue.

Goddamit.

\-----------

“Hawkeye,” says Captain America. 

“Heyyyyyy, Cap,” Clint says. “How’s things?” The coffee machine flashes green at him, and he almost moans in relief as he pulls a mug out and fills it to the brim. 

“I’d ask how you were doing but something tells me you wouldn’t give me a straight answer.” 

Clint winces and scratches at the back of his head. This of course pulls on his ribs, making him suck in a sharp breath – which, goddammit, is all he needs while on the phone with someone with super hearing and a habit of getting pissed off when anyone on his team gets so much as a damn _papercut_. 

The captions don’t actually change, but by now Clint knows Steve well enough to know that if they could, they would look chilly. “How many times have we been over this, Hawkeye?” 

“Cap…” 

“I don’t care how many field medics wrapped you up, the sequence is always debrief, Avengers medical, _then_ home. You’re doing it backwards, Barton.”

“I just…” 

“Get here,” Steve says. “Now.” 

“I’m fine, Cap, seriously, just bruised.” 

“How about we let the actual doctors be the judge of that?” 

“I saw actual doctors! I got stitches! I’ve got painkillers! I’m fine, honest, I just need to sleep for about a week.” 

“You stitched yourself up in the back of a getaway van and let an EMT waft a thermometer in your general direction,” Steve counters. 

Clint sucks in another breath and winces, again. “Yeah, that’s right,” Steve says. “Natasha’s already submitted _her_ report. And now she’s in medical, where she’s _supposed_ to be. Get here, Hawkeye, now.” 

Jarvis throws up another ellipsis and then Tony’s golden letters are back. “See, this shit is why I keep harping on about that one room in the Tower, may have mentioned it once or twice, entire thing is painted purple, think I showed you round once or maybe poured you into it after Thor’s birthday party, ringing any bells?” 

“Ugh, but it’s _Manhattan_ ,” Clint complains. His coffee is still way too hot, but that doesn’t stop him pretty much necking it. 

He didn’t need the skin on the inside of his throat anyway. 

“What the hell have you got against Manhattan?” Tony says.

“Manhattan gives me heartburn.” Clint swallows another mouthful of scalding coffee. Blessed, blessed nectar. “Seriously, man, what’s got Cap’s panties all in a twist?” Clint asks. He almost feels like his head might not explode at any given second. _Almost_. “Can’t just be little old me.”

“You’ve been out of touch for four months, Birdbrain, came back injured after a massive firefight during which your comms got cut, and you didn’t check in with Mama Bear before going offline and unresponsive for over twelve hours.” 

Clint pulls the second Pop-Tart out of its little foil package and takes a big bite. “In fairness,” he says, spraying crumbs everywhere, “I’ve done all of that before without Cap blowing a gasket.” Lucky noses at Clint’s elbow, eyes hopeful. Clint sighs and breaks him off half the Pop-Tart, which he takes with a happy yelp (not that Clint can really hear it) and an invigorated tail wag. Dumb dog.

“True, but a lot of things happen in four months,” Tony says. “Cap’s a bit… He’s got a lot on his plate right now. He just wants to make sure all his lost little ducklings are in a row. Which in his head means seeing them with his own two eyes and, I don’t know, checking for cracks or whatever.” 

Clint frowns. Being the leader of the Avengers obviously comes with a lot of responsibility, but Steve usually handles his stress pretty well, without taking it out on his poor, injured teammates. Especially once he and Tony finally got their heads out of their asses, stopped fighting all the time, and started fucking instead. God, had that _ever_ been a relief. Sure, he mother-hens a bit, but he’s been positively _relaxed_ recently. Or at least he had been four months ago, before SHIELD sent Clint and Natasha on a wild goose chase. An _eventful_ wild goose chase, but still, not the kind of op they were meant to be running. 

“Listen, can you please just get over here?” Tony says. “Cap won’t stop pacing, he’s scaring my bots.” 

Lucky, finished with his breakfast, bounds over and starts pawing at Clint’s leg. Clint pets his ears and he calms a bit, but keeps nosing insistently at Clint’s bare feet. It’s his tell, the one that means he’s really desperate to go out. “I gotta walk the dog,” Clint says. As excuses go, it’s weak, but it’s what he’s got. 

“Bring the damn dog,” Tony says. “I’ll send a cab for you.” 

Clint winces. Images of the mission flash in front of his eyes; the screech of tires on asphalt, the impossible twist of metal and glass that he managed to crawled out of… and three other agents didn’t. “No cars,” he says tightly, rubbing at his chest. “Can’t do cars right now.” 

“Oh. Shit,” Tony says. “Sorry. Um. I can send the–” 

“No,” Clint says, nipping _that_ thought straight in the bud. He has very strict rules about the quinjet and/or Iron Man suit flying to his apartment building full of unsuspecting civilians, which are basically: No, don’t. “Ugh. Do I really have to?”

“Non-negotiable,” Steve’s captions say.

“Clint, seriously, let me come…” Tony starts, but Clint sighs, drains his coffee mug, and resigns himself to his fate.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’ll take the subway.” 

JARVIS helpfully captions Tony’s reaction for him: [long, low whistle]. “Jesus, Clint, taking your life into your own hands, there.” 

“Shut up, rich boy, the subway is _fine._ Us poor plebs use it all the time.” 

“Hawkeye, you are many things, but _poor_ is no longer of them.” It’s an old argument, one they’ve had before, usually whenever Tony deigns to visit him here (which only ever happens when Steve physically makes him). Tony’s the kind of rich that makes you incapable of understanding the comfort that can come from the small, inconsequential things, like the way the paint flakes in the stairwell or how the plumbing will reliably break down once every three months. They agree, however, on the relative merits of owning things you made happen for yourself, and that is the rock on which their truce regarding this shithole Clint calls home rests.

“Keep your nose out of my bank account, Stark.” 

“Just get over here, would you? Steve is wringing his hands. Literally. It’s ridiculous, I’ve never seen anyone actually do that before. You’re turning my boyfriend into a character from an Austen novel, Barton, and I am not okay with it.”

Clint refills his mug from the pot, then puts it down to let Lucky lap up whatever’s left.

“Fine. I’m coming. But you owe me,” Clint tells Tony. 

“Like hell I do,” Tony says. “Not my fault you ignored protocol, Barton.” 

“But it _is_ your fault that my head feels like it’s splitting in two.” 

“And I’ll make up for that.” 

“Send one of your cleaning wizards to mop up after my damn dog and we’ll call it even.” Clint runs his fingers through his hair and then drops his hands to his side. “Ugh. I’ll be there in like. I dunno. Gimme a couple hours.” 

“Make it one and a half,” Steve’s blue letters say. 

“I’ll try, Cap, but. Subway. From Brooklyn. So…” 

“One and a half,” Steve says. JARVIS helpfully underlines the words for emphasis. 

“Yup, Cap, he’s got it, an hour and a half, stop glaring at the phone like that, he can’t see you. Clint, don’t let the metro eat you alive. Or infect you. Gross. The general public are _gross_. Don’t touch the handrails. Oooh, maybe wear gloves! Have you got any disposable nitrile– What am I saying, of course you don’t, don’t worry, I’ll hook you up– Oh, right. Yes. Going now, apparently. Anyway, see you soon!” Tony says, presumably all in one breath, and hangs up. 

“Son of a bitch,” Clint mutters, and Lucky licks his hand in commiseration. 

\-----------

The thing about living in Brooklyn is that it’s a bitch to get anywhere that isn’t Brooklyn. Clint is pretty sure the ancient Brooklyners designed it that way on purpose, to keep the Manhattanites out, and the prevalence of that kind of petty bullshit around this borough is high up on the list of reasons why he loves it so much.

Also, Brooklyn is where his dog and his apartment building live, and therefore, Brooklyn is where Clint lives, too. When he’s not on long-term undercover missions taking down international terrorist rings from the inside, that is. 

A while back, Steve took him aside and tried to convince him to move into the Tower with the rest of the team, but Clint resisted those baby blues like a _pro_. Even Natasha was proud of him, he knows it, though at the _time_ all she did was glare at him reproachfully and pretend to try and guilt trip him into joining them all. Steve was still lurking around them, though, so it was definitely all for show. 

Well, mostly probably for show.

Whatever. The point is, Clint wouldn’t exactly call Cap a _traitor_ for moving to Manhattan, and he knows that constant access to what must be some pretty mindblowing sex (he tries not to think about it but hell, he’s only human, and Steve and Tony are both what might be referred to as _specimens_ , so sue him) is a strong point in Manhattan’s column, but Steve Rogers is a Brooklyn boy, he is _the_ Brooklyn Boy, literally, and Clint may be a midwestern transplant but… Yeah, no, actually, he still thinks Cap’s a bit of a traitor. 

Manhattan, though. It’s just the _worst_. And the people _from_ Manhattan are even more the worst. The worstest? Just generally beyond terrible. Without exception, and that includes you, Tony Stark. 

The _only_ problem about making it hard for Manhattanites to get _to_ Brooklyn is that it also makes it pretty damn difficult to get _from_ Brooklyn to Manhattan. Case in point: Clint’s apartment block is at least a twenty minute walk from the nearest metro station on a good day, and this is _not_ a good day. 

Lucky is ecstatic to be outside, tugging Clint all over the damn place to put his nose in one puddle of piss after another. What is it with dogs and the need to sniff piss? Clint shuffles along behind him gingerly, trying to avoid being shoved into by other pedestrians, and wincing every time a tug on Lucky’s leash leads to shooting pain across Clint’s ribcage. 

They’ve barely made it two blocks before Clint is seriously reconsidering just dealing with the Steve-shaped consequences later and going back to his bed and his pizza. He’s managed a lot more than a walk to the train with injuries much more painful and life-threatening, but he’s tired and hungry and while the painkillers are doing their job, he still _hurts_ , and he just doesn’t _want_ to sit through two hours of Captain America standing in a corner looking worried and making a doctor go over every single inch of him with a magnifying glass or what the fuck ever. All that attention on him makes him feel all weird and wobbly. Clint is a grown-ass man, but Steve Rogers still has the ability to make him feel like a small, snot-ridden child meeting his hero for the first time. It’s just — he makes this _face._ Like he’s worried and disappointed all at once, and it is _too damn much_. 

Academically, Clint knows Steve Rogers is just another guy; not even 30 years old, and in many ways a _total_ loser. He has watched Steve Rogers, total loser, just about swallow his tongue trying to talk to any woman under the age of 80; be an utter ass to the guy he likes for _months_ rather than just ask him out like any normal person; and puke his actual guts out after five too many rounds of Asgardian liquor. Clint has seen all this with his own two eyes, but at the end of the day there is just no getting around the fact that he used to sleep under sheets with Steve Roger’s stupid heroic face on them. 

He can’t help it: upsetting Captain America just makes him feel like an utter shit, and he has zero resistance to that damn _face_. Goddammit. He’ll just have to suffer through. The alternative is just way, way worse.

“This is why you should never meet your heroes, Lucky, and you should _especially_ never agree to let them be your boss. No one should have this kind of power. The guilt trips are just not worth it.” 

Lucky ignores him in favour yapping at a squirrel running up a tree.

At least Natasha is probably still at SHIELD like the good little agent she is, which is one positive at least. He can’t deal with her _and_ Cap fussing over him. He just cannot. 

 

Ugh. Being a superhero. Who’d do it? 

Idiots, that’s who.

\-----------

The Metro station, when he finally hobbles in, is pretty quiet. Lucky, in his little blue service dog vest, draws a few curious glances. The dog hams it up for the crowd while they wait for the train, shamelessly flashing his big doggy eyes at passersby in exchange for attention. Clint lets him, because the more people look at his dog, the less they look at him. 

He doesn’t often get recognised – he’s no Steve Rogers or Tony Stark, after all, and his weapon of choice means that he’s almost never in the money shots that get splashed all over the news. Outside of New York, it’s almost never a problem (to the point where he can still go on undercover missions for SHIELD), but New Yorkers are proud of their own, and in Manhattan (and now in select parts of Brooklyn that he avoids at all costs) there is the ever-present threat of hypervigilant _tourists_. He doesn’t _mind_ when it does happen, but he’d just rather not deal with it. Especially not today. 

The key to not being recognised is to not look like you’re trying not to be recognised. So Clint takes his big yellow dog with him and slings his big purple backpack over his shoulder (stuffed to the brim with emergency tac gear and a retractable bow and arrows, because he’s still an Avenger and weird shit happens to them with alarming frequency) and between all that and his bright purple hoodie, he sticks out like the kind of sore thumb no one even looks twice at in this city full of weirdos and freaks. 

They have to wait almost 15 minutes for a train, and when they do get on there aren’t any seats. Clint and Lucky stand next to the door, Clint with his hood pulled up so it shadows his eyes and Lucky with his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth like an idiot. 

“Dumb dog,” Clint mutters, rolling his eyes, but he keeps his hand on Lucky’s head nonetheless. He is _not_ having a good day, and while a car would have been pretty much impossible, the train is not much better. It’s claustrophobic and there are too many people and the air conditioning is _brutal_. He’d managed to find his hearing aids before he left, but he hasn’t put them in, in deference to the (thankfully fading) remnants of his splitting headache, so combined with the generalised anxiety, his other senses are on hyperdrive. 

Almost on autopilot, he cases the train, noting his proximity to the various windows and doors, calculating lines of sight and likeliest weaknesses. There are many. The car is full but not _rammed_ , busy enough to put him on edge but not so full he can’t take stock of the other passengers. His eyes glide over art students and single moms, baseball fans and afternoon-shift workers. When he catches himself lingering briefly on at least one kid who definitely has drugs in his backpack, trying to assess _just how nervous_ the kid is and how likely he is to do something about it, he forces himself to stop. It’s fine. These are just New Yorkers. The likelihood that any of them are evil robots is only, like, fifteen percent. Pretty much negligible. 

Despite his best attempts to calm himself, Clint nearly jumps out of his skin when someone reaches up and taps him on the arm. There’s a girl talking to him (college student, Clint thinks, and _definitely_ not from around here, judging by her willingness to talk to strangers), making motions towards her seat. 

Clint shakes his head. “I’m fine to stand,” he tells her, probably too loudly – or maybe not loudly enough? He’s not great with volume control even when he _has_ his aids in and isn’t trying to account for whatever background noise is happening in this train. He offers her a quick grateful smile and looks away, because he has lived in this city long enough to know you never maintain eye contact if you don’t have to.

She must say something else to him because Lucky perks his ears up and noses at Clint’s hand, but he was staring resolutely at an ad along the top of the train car instead of watching her face and missed whatever it was she said. 

“Seriously, it’s fine,” he says. Lucky noses at her leg, and she pets him gingerly on the head as the train pulls into the next station. The doors pull open, and she leaps up, gesturing at her seat again before rushing off the train. Clint is about to sit when he spots the brown grocery bag underneath the seat she just vacated. He looks up to shout after her about her groceries, but the crowd on the platform has closed around her and just like that, she’s gone. 

“Well, shit,” he says, sitting and pulling the bag into his lap to check there isn’t anything too valuable in it. Inside there’s a box of popcorn, a pack of gum, and – most interestingly – a bottle of bourbon. 

Clint looks around. No one is looking at him, because that’s the rule of the metro, and if anyone _did_ witness their exchange, they’ve probably carefully made sure to forget about it already. 

He’s not usually like this, but he feels like _shit_ , and he’s got to go cope with Captain America’s sad face, and whenever he closes his eyes he sees that car crash in Mumbai, and suddenly he just really needs a goddamn drink. 

That’s not sad, is it? 

Actually, who’s he kidding? He is definitely usually like this. This would not even come close to the top five most dubious things he has found in strange places and subsequently consumed. And it’s not like he’d be drinking alone. There’s a whole train load of people with him. That counts, right? Does that count? That probably doesn’t count. 

Well, he thinks. Sharing is caring, right? And what the MTA giveth should really never be taken for granted, because the MTA almost never giveths anything at all. In fact, all the MTA ever does is taketh – _take_ , Jesus – and it is about damn time it gave something back.

Resolved, Clint turns to the guy next to him, hunkered down in a black hoodie, all long brown hair and brooding stubble. Does stubble brood? Whatever. Dude looks like he needs a drink too, judging by the way his fingers have gone white at the knuckle where he’s clutching at his knee. Clint may just be projecting here, but he seems a bit tense.

“Hey,” Clint says, breaking cardinal rule of the MTA #1 (Thou shalt never speak to strangers on the train) so flagrantly that multiple people turn to stare at him. Also there’s that pesky volume control thing – he’s definitely over-pitching it. “Want a drink?”

Brooding Stubble turns to look at Clint and _wow_. Clint feels something wrench in his gut. Dude is not just brooding, he is _hot_. Like, he is drop-dead gorgeous, all sharp cheekbones and deep grey eyes and long, rich brown hair. It takes a full hot second for Clint to realise that those plush-looking lips are clearly trying to say something to him, but the guy is mumbling and Clint catches exactly none of it – and not just because he’s too busy drooling internally.

He pulls a face, apologetically. “Sorry, what? Can you say that again, slower? I’m like, pretty much completely deaf.” 

Dude narrows his eyes, his beautiful grey eyes, and then darts a glance down to Lucky’s vest, emblazoned with the words “HEARING DOG” in bright white embroidery. 

This time when he speaks, he looks straight at Clint, speaking slowly and clearly with exaggerated enunciation. Clint has never been gladder for the excuse to stare blatantly at someone’s lips. 

“I said, it’s not even two pm.”

More than a little bit transfixed by the sheer _beauty_ of this random guy, Clint blinks at him and tries to figure out something to say. He ends up with a rather lame, “It’s five o’clock somewhere.”

A beat, and then the guy snorts and shrugs, saying, “Fuck it. Sure. Why not?” 

Clint grins and passes him the bottle, watching him crack the seal out of habit more than any real suspicion. The guy then tips his head back and necks about half the bottle in one go. Well, ok, that’s an exaggeration, but he takes such a long pull that Clint is frankly a mixture of alarmed, impressed, and – dammit – slightly turned on. 

Broody dude passes Clint the bottle and wipes his mouth with the back of his left hand. He’s wearing a black leather glove, which seems a bit odd in May, but he’s got a whole Neo-in-a-hoodie kinda look going on, so maybe it’s for the aesthetic? 

Clint takes a healthy swig of the bourbon himself, relishing the burn in his throat and how his hands instantly feel less shaky. 

“God, that’s better,” he says, fully aware that he sounds like a raging alcoholic and not even caring in the slightest. 

The guy tosses him a bemused sideways glance, one eyebrow quirked, saying something that Clint only catches the faintest edge of. 

“Shit, sorry, hang on.” He takes another swig, passes the guy the bottle, and then digs through his backpack to find his aids. He puts them in and switches them on with a grimace, waiting for the overwhelming rush of ambient noise to fade slightly before turning back to face the guy. “Sorry, what did you say?” 

It’s not perfect – these aids _definitely_ aren’t StarkTech. Still, it’s enough for Clint to catch the timbre of the guy’s voice – smooth, like caramel – and the definitive New York tinge to his words. 

“This how you pick up all the boys? Ply ‘em with booze on the Metro?” 

Oh. _Oh_. Nothing about the guy’s body language would have given it away but – that is _flirting_. That is _definitely_ flirting. _Flirting_ Clint can do. Not well, maybe, but he _can_ do it. Sort of. Nevermind that Natasha has on more than one occasion called his attempts “worse than a car crash”. To his _face_. He definitely can flirt. He has successfully flirted multiple times. Just watch him. 

“Only the really pretty ones,” Clint says with a totally cheesy wink, but it clearly _works_ , because the guy laughs and takes another pull from the bottle with a flourish. 

“Then I think you might be wasting your whiskey, mister,” he says, embellishing with a wink of his own. It’s entirely ridiculous and it should not be so hot, but Clint has to actively work to repress a full body shiver. He is thankfully saved from trying to come up with an answer that isn’t just ‘oh my god, stop you are the hottest thing I’ve ever seen in real life and I work with Captain America’ by Lucky winding himself in between the dude’s legs and nudging hopefully at his hand with the whiskey in it.

“Ugh, sorry, he’s ridiculous. Lucky, quit it, that’s not for you.” 

The guy laughs and, with a quick glance at Clint to check it’s okay, scratches at Lucky’s ears with his gloved fingers. Lucky beams up at him like he hung the damn moon, and Clint sighs. 

“You are such an attention whore,” he tells the dog, who looks at him happily before continuing to beg the guy for more ear skritches. “You’re gonna be stuck doing that for the entire ride now, you know.” 

“That’s alright,” says the guy. Something in his eyes softens as he looks down at Lucky. He has incredible eyes, this stranger, now that Clint is looking – despite the soppy look he’s giving Clint’s ridiculous dog, there’s an element in there of something that is almost hard, full of cold fire. Though, then again, maybe it’s just a trick of the light. Clint blinks and whatever he saw there is gone again, smoothed over, tucked safely away. He’s still giving Lucky that soppy look, though. Clint has a fleeting and very embarrassing thought that he would not at all mind the same soppy look (and strong, skritching fingers) to be turned on him. 

“He’s a good dog, arentcha, bud?” 

Clint snorts. “He’s a terrible dog, but he’s cute so he gets away with it.” 

The guy looks up at him and smirks. “I bet that goes for both of you.” 

Clint huffs a surprised laugh and feels himself flushing. It’s just been awhile since anyone’s flirted at him so brazenly – not to mention that he’s hardly looking his best, what with the split lip and bruising on his cheekbone and exhausted bags under his eyes to rival a panda bear’s. 

Must be his innate and magnetic charm. Natasha was _so_ wrong about him.

“Yeah, I taught him everything he knows,” Clint says, rolling his eyes at Lucky’s shameless antics. The guy laughs and gives Lucky one last final sort of pat before sitting back and reaching for another sip of bourbon. 

At first glance, he looks totally at ease, slouched and loose as he hands the bottle back to Clint with his bare right hand, but Clint’s got sharp eyes used to picking out the most minute of tells, and this guy is anything but at ease. He’s _holding_ himself loose, and his eyes keep darting towards all the exits and weak spots on the train. Casing the joint, just like Clint had been earlier. 

All that intense situational awareness, and the odd single leather glove when it’s warm enough outside for air conditioning – Clint puts two and two together, and comes up with _veteran_. 

“How long have you been back?” he asks before he can think better of it and bite his tongue. He cringes inwardly. Dammit. He always has had the subtlety of a freight train and a habit of going straight for the target. 

The guy inhales sharply and pulls back a little, eyes wide and alarmed. Clint lifts his hands, apologetic. “Sorry. Just – I know the type. Am the type. Whatever. Same difference.” 

Grey eyes slice over Clint’s face and body quickly, clearly doing the same sort of arithmetic Clint had to come up with his little deductive conclusion. His tension ebbs again, slightly but noticeably, and he licks his lips before he answers. (Clint tries very hard not to stare.)

“Four months. A year. Five decades,” the guy says, shrugging a single shoulder. “How are we counting?” 

Clint gives him a wan smile. He knows that feeling – when the seconds feel like days, a minute becomes a week and a year an eternity. “We can count it however you want,” he says. 

Guy nods, still assessing. “You?” he asks, eyes lingering on the butterfly tape across Clint’s cheekbone. 

 

“Yesterday,” Clint says. He shrugs. “Shore leave.” 

“And you’re already up and about? Christ, I’d be sleeping for a week, if I were you. Or at least still in bed.” He lifts a suggestive eyebrow, and Clint laughs. “Come on, everyone knows you’re not supposed to leave bed on shore leave. Don’t tell me you couldn’t find any company.” 

“What, looking like I’ve been ten rounds with a skrull?” Clint snorts. “Not likely.” 

The guy full on leers at him, eyes twinkling and teeth flashing. “I wouldn’t kick you outta bed for no crumbs, soldier,” he says, and Clint can’t help but bark out a laugh.

“You’ve got some interestingly low standards, man.” 

“Maybe I’m just looking for another way to keep serving my country,” Guy teases. “Support the troops. Reward them for their bravery and patriotism.” 

“Well, I’m no Captain America,” Clint says with a chuckle. He’s expecting a sympathetic chuckle, an insistence that he’s still damn hot (Clint has a mirror, he knows he’s doing just fine). What he gets, though, is a visceral, full-body wince. He frowns. “What, don’t tell me you wouldn’t! Come on, he’s like six foot three of pure corn-fed patriotic muscle.” 

“Uh, not really my type,” Guy says, still looking entirely weirded out.

“I mean, me neither, but I still wouldn’t kick him out of bed. Don’t think I could, anyway, dude must weigh about 300 pounds.” Which, huh, he’d never thought about that, actually. His mental assessment of Tony’s fitness levels goes up a little bit, because wow, yeah, that is _a lot_ of supersoldier to wrangle, and Tony is not some spring chicken. “Or what, you prefer ‘em more scrawny?”

The guy looks away and mutters something, but Clint can’t quite catch it. It looks like something like ‘less of a pain in my ass’ though could also equally be ‘less brain than sass’. Clearly he needs to brush up on his lip-reading skills. All this StarkTech around, it’s making him _way_ too reliant on technology. 

“Sorry, what? Didn’t catch that.”

“I said, less of an ass,” the guy says. “That guy, he’s always so… Ugh. Just, no.” 

Clint shrugs. He gets it: Cap rates well with most people, but his PR persona is scrubbed pretty damn clean of anything even vaguely controversial, and all that righteous patriotic bullshit can get pretty obnoxious. Especially to anyone that’s ever spent a day on the front lines pulling sand out of their teeth and playing hopscotch through fields full of IEDs. If Clint didn’t know the guy, he probably wouldn’t be able to stand him now either, childhood hero be damned. 

“So if Cap is out, how _do_ you like ‘em,” Clint asks, because apparently he’s had more bourbon than he realised, on top of painkillers, and his brain to mouth filter (faulty at the best of times) has _gone_. 

It’s enough to snap the guy out of his weird mood, though. He looks Clint over, assessing and wolfish, before he answers: “Wearing purple.” 

Clint flushes, and takes another sip of bourbon. _Christ._

The guy’s expression smoothes into a grin, friendly, his eyes full of mischief. “Sorry, I’ve been told I maybe come on a bit strong.” 

“Did you hear me complaining?” Clint asks, voice pitched a little high even to his ears.

Guy chuckles. “Guess not. So, really. Why aren’t you passed out right now? You look like you could use it.” 

“Oh, thanks.” 

“Hey, man, you said it first.” 

“Fair,” Clint admits. “Ugh. My plan was, sleep, pizza, dog, TV for like a week, but apparently I got a doctor’s appointment I can’t skip.” Clint rolls his eyes. 

“In Manhattan?” Guy asks. “Now that’s just cruel.” 

“That’s what I said!” Clint agrees dramatically. “But no one ever listens to what I want, do they?” 

“Pal, you’ve got some overbearing doctors.” 

“I’ve got a boss that worries too much for his own damn good, is what I’ve got. I’ve got bruised ribs, a couple stitches and a scratch. I’m fine. Just let me sleep. Don’t make me trek to Manhattan just so you can reassure yourself I’m still in one piece, man.” 

Guy snorts, shaking his head. “I got one of those, too,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I come back, my best friend – we grew up together, used to live together, too, out in Red Hook – but he got back a bit before me and now he’s all shacked up with his fancy new boyfriend, and sure, there’s a lot of space in his new place, and they wanted me to just move in there, but – I just. It’s _Manhattan_.” He pulls a face that makes his nose wrinkle, and he looks so disgusted at the very thought that Clint wants to kiss him. “Plus his new fella – he’s a bit… … uh, he’s a bit much.” 

Clint gives him a sympathetic look and passes him the bottle of bourbon. They’ve put a healthy dent in it already. Clint feels better for it, calmer. Less aware of just how many other unknown people are crammed into this tiny train car under however many feet of ground, or the way his ribs shout at him every time he takes a breath. 

“He keeps _checking_ on me. Like, not just a little – every couple hours. Wants to make sure that I haven’t gone completely wacko without him watching every move, or something. Check that I’m _readjusting._ Like he’s any better – he’s just as badly adjusted as I am. Worse, even, sometimes. So I’ve been out, looking for a place of my own in Brooklyn. Didn’t tell him I’d left – he’s gonna flip his lid when I get back.” He winces and takes another healthy swig of whiskey. 

“Must be nice to see him, though? After – uh, being away?” 

“Oh, sure,” the guy says, though he gets a bit of a distant look on his face. Clint would follow up on it, ask what’s up with that, but he’s not sure exactly how personal you’re allowed to get with the random stranger you’re sharing train whiskey with. He doesn’t even know the guy’s name. Which – Actually, that’s an easy fix. 

“I’m Clint, by the way,” he says. “And that’s Lucky.” 

Guy tips him a small smile, acknowledging Clint’s almost tactful changing of a clearly sensitive subject. 

“James,” he says, though he doesn’t sound one hundred percent sure about that. Whatever, not the first time a stranger’s given Clint a fake name, won’t be the last. “Nice to make your acquaintance.” 

Clint opens his mouth to say something, maybe get back to the flirting they were doing earlier, that was nice – but of course that’s when the train comes to a sudden and total stop, nowhere near a platform of any kind.

“Aw, train, nooo.” 

Because obviously the train just had to stop between stops right underneath the East River.

Clint hates being underground at the best of times – he likes altitude and long sight lines and the feeling of fresh air and plentiful oxygen in his lungs. Being underground _and_ underwater is really not a great combination. 

Lucky’s ears perk up, and Clint hears the tannoy click on, but his shitty backup aids can’t make sense of the crackling loudspeaker, and the noise of a whole train full of people grumbling and moaning doesn’t help matters.

“What’s he saying?” Clint asks James, who is suddenly on high alert, every muscle in his body held tense and tight. 

“Blockage on the line,” James says, eyes darting around the train, assessing. Clint wonders if he even knows he’s doing it. “Unplanned stop. Not sure how long it’ll take. Sit tight.” 

“Dammit,” Clint swears. “Fucking MTA. Cap’s gonna _kill_ me.” 

James darts a sudden, curious look at him. “My boss,” Clint explains. “My Captain. He gave me two hours to get there. I’m gonna be late.” 

James pulls a sympathetic face, then immediately goes back to casing the train, checking exits and running his eyes over the other occupants, gauging them for threat, probably. His knuckles are white and gripping his knee again. 

“Hey, James? Okay, man?” 

James jerks a nod, but Clint isn’t convinced. This isn’t the hot flirty guy on the subway anymore: This is a soldier trapped in a strange situation with no weapons, no armour, no backup, and a whole boatload of trauma just waiting to relive itself. Clint can relate: he is about two inches from freaking out himself – but he, at least, is armed. 

“Seriously, it’s fine. This happens all the time. The MTA are just shit.” 

“I know,” James says, gritting his teeth. “Just. Underground.” 

“Sucks,” Clint agrees. “Here, have another sip, it’ll help.” 

“Doubtful,” James mutters, but he accepts the bottle anyway and takes a sip. They wait there a minute, both watching, ignoring the huff and grumble of the disgruntled passengers around them. And then they both see it: A glimpse of movement outside the train, a flash of green fabric and pale, yellow skin.

\-----------

“Son of a bitch,” Clint says, knocking his head back against his window with a groan. 

“What the fuck was that?” James asks, voice tight like a tripwire. 

“Not sure,” Clint lies. He knows exactly what it was, but he was really really hoping to never have to deal with them again. Goddamit. Just when he’d been thinking his very bad no good day was on the up. MTA fuck ups he can deal with, not his problem, but this – this was going to end up being his problem, and he was just _really_ not in the mood. Ugh. _Ugh_. 

“Just, hold on,” he says under his breath to James. “I’m gonna go talk to the driver, play the deaf card, see what’s happening.” 

“I’m coming with you,” James says, but Clint waves him off. 

“Stay here with Lucky.” 

“Like hell,” James starts to protest, but Clint hands him Lucky’s leash, effectively grounding him, and heads to the front of the train. He’d chosen the first car of the train for this exact reason. Call him paranoid, but he’s an Avenger and shit just _happens_ to Avengers. And when shit happens, it’s always good to have easy access to the dude in charge of the large machinery. 

“Hey,” Clint says, rapping on the little window of the door to the driver’s cabin. “Hey, open up.” 

There’s a muffled sentence from inside the driver’s cabinet but Clint can’t make out a single word. Damn these piece of shit aids. “Hey guy, I’m deaf, can you open up, I can’t hear shit. Just the window is fine, if you want.” 

There’s a pause before the driver pulls down his – oh, shit, _her_ window. “Sir, there’s been a blockage on the line,” she says, very slowly, enunciating every word. Clint appreciates it, really he does, but also he wishes people wouldn’t overdo it all the damn time. “If you just take your seat again, I’m sure we’ll be on our way shortly.” 

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we won’t. We got moloids outside.” 

“Excuse me?” the driver asks, looking a bit shocked. “How do you–” 

“Moloids? Creepy little dudes, live underground, terrorise the MTA on a regular basis? Yeah, there’s a couple outside.” 

“I know what – but how do _you_ know–” 

“Hi,” Clint says, brightly, pushing back his hood and flashing her his most winning smile. “Clint Barton, you might know me as Hawkeye? I’m an Avenger. Nice to meet you.” 

She blinks at him and then visibly blanches. “Shit,” she says. “Hold on.” The window goes up and there’s a bit of scraping around before the door opens and she stands aside to let Clint in. 

Clint glances back to where James is sitting, at the other end of the car, and gives him a couple thumbs up and taps a couple fingers against his wrist. _Give me a couple minutes_. 

James glares at him, but Lucky – good idiot dog that he is – distracts him by spotting something at the window (probably another damn moloid), and starting to bark and fuss. James grabs him around the neck and starts trying to calm him down, more power to him for trying. Clint closes the door behind him. 

“You’re – Hawkeye? Really?” The driver – Ayesha, her badge says – stares up at him from her seat. 

“In the flesh. So listen, about these moloids –” 

“It’s too soon,” Ayesha says, getting right to it, thankfully. “We just had the monthly event last week. This never usually happens.” 

“Yeah, thought so,” Clint says, sighing. “Any outgoing comms?” 

She shakes her head. “I managed to get the signal out when I realised what was going on, but – my radio is fried and there’s _definitely_ no signal down here.”

“Of course it is. And mine are out of commission as well.” He thinks about the custom built StarkTech hearing aids lying useless at the bottom of his bag, once again cursing Tony and his habit of putting arc reactors in anything that sits still long enough. Although, ironically, this is the kind of moment when supercharged communications abilities might actually come in handy. 

There’s a succession of short, quick raps on the window, and a man’s voice on the other side of the door. Clint grimaces and glances to Ayesha for translation. 

“Uh, he said, ‘Clint, come get your damn dog before I throw him out the window.’” She blinks. “You’ve got a dog? On the train? You know you’re really not allowed–” 

“He’s a service dog,” Clint says. “I really am actually deaf.” He pulls down the window to grin at James’s fuming face. “Hey. Can we help you?” 

“What’s going on?” 

“Small problem, just a bit of a hold up, nothing to worry about. You can sit back down if you want.” 

James raises an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Wanna tell me what we’re planning to do about the bunch of damn moloids climbing all over this train, or what?” 

That, admittedly, is a surprise. The Avengers and the MTA alike had worked pretty damn hard to keep the general public blissfully ignorant of these things. It wasn’t easy, considering their leader, the Mole Man, had just one real desire in life: widespread recognition of both his genius and his claim to what _he_ called part of his kingdom Subterranea and what New Yorkers liked to call the subway. 

Ayesha groans and throws her hands in the air. “How do you all _know about these things?_ ” 

“Well I know how _I_ know,” Clint says, frowning. “I dunno how this guy knows.” James just raises an eyebrow at him.

“I know things,” he says. “Also, I followed you up here, and you’re pretty loud.” 

“Shit,” Clint hisses. “Get in here.” He opens the door to the cab and yanks James through by the arm. It’s a tight fit, especially once Lucky winds his way in among their feet. Clint ends up pressed right against James, which he is _definitely_ not going to complain about, but it makes it a lot harder to think straight. Hah. _Literally_. 

“There are way more of them now,” Ayesha says, glancing out the window. “What do we do?” 

Clint peers out the front of the train. Sure enough, several more moloids are clambering out of the tunnel walls and floor, scrabbling towards the train. “You said you got the signal out?” 

Ayesha nods the affirmative; James asks “What signal?” 

Clint waves him off, thinking. “Okay, then what we need most of all is time. They’re not going to try and hurt us unless we give them a real reason to.” 

“Sure about that?” James asks, nodding out to the front of the train, just as one of the moloids hoists a pretty sizeable rock over his head and throws it straight at them. 

“Okay, so, this looks bad,” Clint says, staring as another moloid chucks a rock at them. Like the one before, it glances off the windscreen, but this one leaves a small crack in its wake. 

“Ya think?” James asks, dripping sarcasm. 

“Shit,” Ayesha says, gripping the train’s control column so tight her knuckles turn white. “What do we do?”

Clint wracks his brain. There are about ten moloids in immediate sight, and god knows how many others that they can’t see behind them. “How many cars on this train?” 

“Eight,” Ayesha says.

“Alright. Here’s what we do. We get everyone consolidated at the back of the train. As few cars as possible, without creating some kind of public health hazard. No one leaves the train until we’ve got some back-up. You got that?” he asks Ayesha, who nods and stands up, looking determined. “Great. I’m going to go out there and try to … negotiate. Close the door behind me and don’t open it again unless you hear me knock.” He demonstrates, a quick knock-knock knock knock-knock-knock. “Awesome. You got this. James, you take Lucky and help her—”

“Like hell,” James hisses. “You can’t go out there without backup.” 

Clint grimaces. “Look, it’s fine. These guys are idiots. They gnaw on wires and throw rocks and make a nuisance of themselves, but what they really want is attention, and I can’t give them that if I’ve gotta be worrying about you, too.” 

“I can take care of myself,” James says, low and hard. “Better than you can, I’m willing to bet.” 

“We don’t have time for this. You’re not even armed, what are you gonna do if they decide to attack, glare at them….” He trails off, because he blinked and suddenly James has a gun in one hand and four – no, _five_ – absolutely _beautiful_ throwing knives in the other. “Huh. Whaddya know, you are armed.” Clint blinks again. As if this guy could get any _hotter_. Jesus. 

He shakes himself mentally, because that is not a productive train of thought, and they are on the clock here. “You know, I’m starting to think your buddy isn’t too far off the mark. Not sure carrying an arsenal around New York counts as well adjusted.”

James grins at him, all teeth. “Showed you mine, now show me yours.” 

Outside the train, more moloids continue to appear. Clint mentally takes stock. The retractable bow Tony made for him and then modified one too many times is not his favourite, but it’s solid in a tight spot. He does also have a few trick arrowheads in his bag, though, which are always useful, not to mention amusing. He left his body armour at home, but he does have a light modified Kevlar undervest thing on that he definitely did not swipe from Tony’s workshop once when he wasn’t looking. 

Subway tunnels are not an ideal spot for a fire fight, though – poor visibility and high potential for unpredictable ricochet – and there’s the pesky fact that he can’t kill them all, no, he has to _humanely incapacitate_ them, or risk Steve doing that _face_ for weeks. The moloids are small, but they can be pretty damn vicious, and there are a _lot_ of them. What Clint really needs is another pair of eyes and ears, and he wouldn’t mind borrowing one of those knives, either. 

James is a big guy. If all else fails, at least he can stand there and look menacing.

Christ, is he really considering this? Taking a civilian (veteran, sure, but still, _currently a civilian_ ) he met not 20 minutes ago out into a fight? After watching the guy neck nearly half a bottle of bourbon and flirt with him shamelessly? 

Well. It’s not like anyone’s got any _better_ plans.

“Fuck it. Fine. Just – stay back, don’t get in the way, and do what I tell you.”

“Who made you the leader of this damn operation?” James asks, arms crossed over his chest again.

Ayesha stares at him. “Dude, you know that’s Hawkeye, right? He’s a damn Avenger, what he says goes.” 

James blinks at him once, twice, and then Clint watches the recognition slowly dawn on his face. He tips James an irreverent salute. “The Amazing Hawkeye, at your service.” 

“Huh,” is all James says, blinking at him again. 

Ayesha looks between them both for a second and then rounds on Clint. “Who even is this guy? I thought he was with you.” 

“Well, apparently he is now,” Clint says, sighing and rubbing at his temples. “Less talking, more dealing with the situation. I’m late for a meeting with Captain America, you’ve no idea how bitchy he gets when you make him wait.” 

James snorts, but Ayesha still looks vaguely scandalised. Clint waves it off. “Whatever. Let’s go. Ayesha, take Lucky. He’s an idiot but he makes a passable guard dog. James, with me. And please, Christ, none of you get killed on me. You have no _idea_ the kind of paperwork they make me do when that happens.” 

Ayesha’s eyes widen. “Is that … likely to happen?” 

“Not if I’ve got anything to say about it,” James growls. Clint ignores what that sound does to his insides and rummages around in his bag. He pockets a select few of the retractable trick arrows Tony had made for him on a whim and a dare, and sticks a handful of normal arrows in his small travel quiver, the one he’d laughed at Katie-Kate for buying him but which he now totally never goes anywhere without. Finally, he grabs his retractable bow out, flicking it sharply so it snaps into place and then checking it over with quick, practised movements. 

He looks up to find James watching him, appraising. His eyes are hungry. Clint smirks at him. “She’s a beauty, huh?”

“Ain’t the bow I’m lookin’ at, Hawkguy,” James says, and just like that, they’re back to flirting. Clint grins and is about to reply (whether to tell James to get his head in the game or to flirt right back, he still doesn’t know), when there’s a loud thump from the outside the carriage, like something hitting off the window. 

“Aaaand there’s our cue,” Clint says. “Time to get this show on the road. Ayesha? Mic me.” 

She hands him the tannoy speaker and nods, pressing the little green button that must switch its broadcast on. “Hey folks, it’s your friendly neighbourhood Hawkeye, here, coming at you live from the driver’s seat. Yes, that Hawkeye. You know. The Avenger. Yeah, anyway, you guys might’ve noticed, we’ve come to an unscheduled stop due to a situation in the tunnel. The authorities have been alerted and are on their way, and my, uh, associate and I will be dealing with the immediate issues. In the meantime, please listen to Ayesha, our extra awesome driver today, and follow her instructions. Don’t give her any problems, or I’ll tell Captain America on you, and trust me, you do not want that guy to be disappointed in you. What else, what else – Oh! Super important: Keep the doors and windows shut, and do not open them under any circumstances, and everything will be just fine. Hawkeye out.”

Clint tosses Ayesha the microphone back and gingerly manoeuvres his bow over his shoulder. “Okay team. Let’s do this thing.” 

“Still not one hundred percent clear on what it is we’re doing,” James grumbles. “But sure.” 

“Hopefully, not much,” Clint says, wincing as he stands up. Goddamn ribs. “Just… stand behind me and look menacing.”

“ _That_ I can do,” James says, twirling a knife between his fingers, and yeah, that’s terrifying as _fuck._ (Also hot. So fucking hot. Fuck.) 

“I’m so going to get fired,” Ayesha moans. 

“Nah,” Clint says, patting her on the back. “You got this. Just, uh, maybe don’t look outside.”

He pulls the door of the cab open with his best “I’m an Avenger, trust me” smile plastered on his face. He’s never really been quite sure if it’s effective or not. Maybe he should ask Nat, they could workshop it. She’s good at pretending to be reassuring instead of letting on how much she actually just wants to kill or maim everyone in the room. 

Most of the passengers are standing, crowded in the tiny aisle, and when Clint opens the cab door, they all start shouting at once. Clint raises his hands to try and pacify them, but before he manages to say anything, James shoulders in front of him and shouts, “Hey! You heard the man. Sit your asses down, do what the driver tells you, and let us do our jobs, and we ain’t gonna have a problem here.” 

“Who the hell are you?” shouts one of the passengers. “You ain’t no Avenger.”

James crosses his arms over his chest. It may be a figment of Clint’s imagination, but he would swear the man actually flexes his damn biceps. (Clint’s mouth runs entirely dry. He is _so_ going to hell and he does not even care.) “I’m _gonna_ be your worst nightmare, pal, if you don’t sit down and do what the nice lady tells you.” 

Something in his tone must resonate with the dude’s survival instincts, because he sits down almost immediately. 

“Thanks, man,” Clint says, clapping James on the shoulder and drawing him back. “Everything is going to be fine. Just… stay inside the train.”

“What are they?” one woman wants to know. “Those things outside?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified,” Clint says. “Look, I don’t really have time for any more of this, so…” He turns to Ayesha. “You got it from here?” She nods, her hand flexing on Lucky’s leash. “Great. Lucky, stay. James, let’s go.” 

\-----------

Clint leads the way out of the train, bow drawn and ready. The hop down to the ground jars his ribs in a very unpleasant way; he does his best not to suck in a pained breath but fails miserably. Motherfucking _ow_. James follows just behind, landing gracefully with a soft _thud._

“You okay there?” James asks, looking concerned. 

“Oh, sure. Fought bigger things off with worse injuries before,” Clint says, trying to sound suave about it. From the way James just crooks an eyebrow at him, it clearly doesn’t work. 

“I’m hoping it won’t actually come to a fight,” Clint murmurs, carefully pitching his volume low as he and James advance towards the front of the train, an unspoken consensus to seek more open terrain. “But if it does, I’m not going to be good for much movement and these aids are for shit, so… don’t count on me to run, and don’t try and whisper at me, I won’t hear you.” 

“What, Tony Stark doesn’t do hearing aids?” 

“He does, but those ones got a bit … blown up. This is my backup pair.” 

“And they’re what, Hammer Tech?” James asks, clearly teasing. Clint huffs a laugh: If Tony ever heard that, he’d blow a damn gasket.

“Walmart,” he says. “So better than that at least.” 

James chuckles. They round the end of the train and Clint shades his eyes with one hand. The glaring headlights of the train make for difficult visibility at first, though it’s clear as the moloids advance on them from all corners of the tunnel that they find the bright light even more unpleasant. There must be thirty or forty moloids by now, all just under four feet tall, with withered pale yellow skin and big, glowing eyes, dressed only in deep green cloaks. They chitter and chatter in low hisses that totally screw with Clint’s aids as they swarm around him and James, boxing them in. 

Yeah, this is going to go _great_. 

Back to back, James and Clint circle around, Clint with his bow drawn and James with his gun. Now they’re surrounded, the moloids aren’t advancing, aren’t attacking, they’re just watching the two of them circle, hissing and spitting. 

“Seriously, guys, what’s with the creepy Gollum act?” Clint says, waving his bow at the small army of moloids, as if that’ll do him any good. “I haven’t got anything in my pocketses.” 

“Got a plan, here, Hawkeye, or just going to keep throwing obsolete references at them until they spontaneously combust?” James asks, elbowing Clint in the back. James has been drifting them sideways with every spin, Clint realises, out of the bright, blinding light and over to the side of the tunnel. The position gives them both better sightlines of the tunnel either side of the train, which would otherwise be plunged into darkness if they were standing directly in front of the lights, and the more moloids standing directly in front of the light, the better – it seems to be almost physically hurting them. It’s an excellent strategic move, casually executed in a way that is obviously just _natural_. Whoever this guy is, he clearly knows from fights in suboptimal conditions. 

“When we get out of this, you and I are going to have a long talk about you calling The Hobbit obsolete,” Clint says. “Hey, dirt for brains! Yeah, you, pale and ugly. Where’s your leader, huh? He’s gotta be around here somewhere, never knew him to miss a shindig called in his honor.” 

A loud boom echoes throughout the tunnel. The moloids skitter back en masse to reveal a mound of earth between the rails, growing and growing, bending the train tracks around it until they snap. There goes any last ditch plan Clint had of somehow hotwiring the damn train and driving it through like a wrecker. 

From the middle of the mound, a man explodes with a spray of dirt and a great flourish of long-clawed hands. The moloids’ chittering crescendos and then drops away. Unfurling proudly on top of his pile of dirt, the Mole Man surveys the scene with his hands planted on his hips. 

Clint rolls his eyes. “This guy,” he mutters to James, who is watching the scene looking entirely nonplussed, like he can’t quite get his head around what he’s seeing, and if he could, he wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cringe. Clint can commiserate – he’d had exactly the same reaction the first few times he’d met Harvey Elder, a short, trollish-looking man clad entirely in green from head to toe. The dude wore a cape at all times, carried a stick he never seemed to actually do anything with, and always wore bright blue _sunglasses_. Underground. Even Tony would take his sunglasses off in a subway tunnel. (Probably). Add to that the fact that he liked to call himself the Mole Man, and basically it was just a whole bunch of _really fucking weird_. 

Unfortunately, the dude also had enough clout to make himself a real nuisance if he wanted to – and he almost always wanted to.

To the Mole Man, Clint says, “Hey, Harvey, how’s it going, long time no see.”

“You know this guy?” James hisses, only just loud enough for Clint to hear him. 

“We’ve met,” Clint says, rueful. “A couple times, actually. Hey, how’s Minotaur doing?” 

The Mole Man levels a glare at him. “You know full well the fate of the mighty Minotaur, laid waste by you and your compatriots.” 

“Oh hey, that’s right,” Clint says. “Nearly forgot about that. That was awesome, man, you should’ve seen it, Tony gave me these arrows that–” 

“Enough!” cries the Mole Man. “I will tolerate this insolence no more! You trespass on the sovereign lands of Subterrannea and you will pay the price of passage or be punished!” 

Clint pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, hey, about that, I seem to recall in the aftermath of that whole, you know, laying your evil monster to waste thing we did, remember that? I kinda remember after that, didn’t we all sit down and talk for hours, and I mean literal hours, hours I will never get back from my life, until we came up with an agreement that made us all happy? Remember that? What happened to that, Harvey?” 

“Pah! The word of the surface dweller is as changeable as the sun under which you live. It was not I who first reneged upon this deal but the dishonourable curs calling themselves the Metropolitan Transit Authority! Contrary to the terms of our agreement, no payment was received this month, and so I have revoked the privilege to right of passage so benevolently bestowed upon you and your kind–”

“Dude, you _lost_ that fight–” 

“And so now you will pay the price of passage, or you and your compatriots will bear the punishment!” 

“Listen, pal,” James says, “I’m pretty sure the MTA didn’t just _forget_ to pay–”

Clint can’t help but snort at that. James looks at him. “What?”

“Well…” He sighs. “It _does_ sound like something the MTA would do, to be honest. I mean, there’s also this whole ritual involved, like Ayesha was saying, lots of bowing and giving of thanks, stroking Harvey’s oversized ego, but mostly the deal was for a monthly payment into an offshore bank account. _Precisely_ to avoid events like this happening on a monthly basis.” 

“Son of a bitch,” James mutters. 

“I am waiting, Hawkeye,” the Mole Man says, tapping his foot impatiently, sending a tiny cascade of pebbles down the side of his mound. 

“Yeah, listen, I’m pretty sure we don’t have the kind of money you’re expecting just hanging out in our pockets.”

“I, too, am sure you do not have such sums to hand.”

“Right,” Clint says. Okay. Good. Progress. Maybe he _could_ sort this out just by talking. Oh man, Cap would be _so proud_. “So, okay, can we write you an IOU on this one, or…?”

“You expect me to fall once more for the same treachery wrought by those dastardly scoundrels, the MTA? No! You and your compatriots will remain in Subterrannea until the payment is made in full and the _appropriate_ apologies are received, commensurate to the grievous dereliction of the terms of our agreement.”

Damn. Well. It was worth a try. “Yeah – I don’t think I can agree to that. We’ve got people on that train who have places to be.” He wracked his brain for a moment. “Listen, how much are we talking, here? Maybe we can sort out some sort of a down payment. ” 

“The monthly payment is 300 US dollars,” the Mole Man declares. 

Clint blinks. “What, seriously?” 

“A princely sum as befits the privilege of passage through these great halls.” 

“Three hundred dollars,” Clint repeats, incredulous. “All this over three hundred bucks?” Next to him, James shifts his weight on his feet. 

The Mole Man narrows his beady eyes at Clint. “You mock me, Hawkeye–“ 

“No, no, not mocking, I’m just saying, give me five minutes, I bet I can scrounge that up from the other passengers no problem.” 

“Do not jest!” Mole Man says, voice shaking in anger. “I will not fall for your tricks.” 

“No, seriously, dude, three hundred bucks, that’s no problem, I’ve probably got fifty in my wallet– Actually, maybe not, I bought pizza on the way home yesterday, but I mean–” 

“Hey,” James says, almost a murmur, only just loud enough for Clint to hear him. “How old is this guy?” 

“What? I dunno, why?” Clint asks, frowning. 

“If he’s old enough – say if he’s Captain America old, three hundred bucks might sound like a crazy amount to come up with in five minutes.” 

“There’s a whole train full of people behind us,” Clint says, pitching his voice low. “I’m pretty sure we’re good for three hundred bucks.” 

“Yeah, but _he_ doesn’t know that. Clearly. He thinks three hundred dollars is a fortune–” 

“Three hundred dollars _is_ a fortune,” the Mole Man insists. “You forget, fools, that we Subterraneans have heightened senses. In particular, our sense of hearing is most refined, for we cherish dark places where our eyes do not always serve us well. Understandable, Hawkeye, that you may forget such things–”

“Hey!” Clint says, turning on him. “Back off the disability, buddy. That’s just rude.” 

“I grow tired of this,” Mole Man snaps. “The payment has not been received–” 

“Look,” Clint says, exasperated. “If you’d give me like, five minutes, dude, I swear–” 

“– _Has not been received_ and your access rights have been revoked. You are trespassing and you have treated our agreement with flagrant contempt. You will be dealt with in the manner according to your crime. The Mole Man has spoken.” Clint watches as he raises his hand in the air, and the chittering of the moloids increases again, tense and threatening. 

So, great. Maybe they weren’t going to be able to get out of this without a fight after all. Damn. Moloids were not usually the top of Clint’s ‘foes who should be feared’ list – the opposite, rather – but he was also not usually fighting injured, in the dark, in a _tunnel_ , with about 200 people trapped in a train behind him and only a complete stranger with unknown and untested levels of combat skills as back-up. (Although said stranger did apparently come with essentially an entire arsenal, but _still_.) 

Speaking of which–

“Hey, did I mention?” Clint says quickly to James, keeping one eye on the encroaching moloids. “We signed a bunch of shit that basically means any fight we have with the Moloids has to be non-lethal or they and the Mole Man have the right to reclaim entire swathes of Manhattan so– Don’t shoot that gun.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” James hisses. “Who’s fucking genius idea was that?!” 

Clint rolls his eyes. “Who do you think? Captain America, obviously.”

“Pain in my _goddamn_ _ass_ , Rogers,” James growls, which frankly Clint thinks is a bit familiar for someone that’s never met the guy, but he definitely understands the sentiment. James flicks the safety on and shoves the gun in the back of his pants with quick, efficient movements that Clint definitely does not stare at, and draws a couple of his knives out of god-only-knows where. Thin air, for all that Clint can see. 

He should definitely not find it hot that the guy walks around New York with a bunch of highly illegal weaponry, but, well – Clint reckons he was probably going to hell anyway, so… it is really, _really_ hot. Goddammit. 

More and more moloids have swarmed around Harvey’s mound, and the circle around Clint and James gets tighter and tighter. Their incessant chittering gets louder and louder as well, and the static in Clint’s aids becomes painful. He would take them out, but with visibility this poor, he really can’t afford to lose another entire sense.

“What’re you going to do, Robin Hood?” James asks Clint over his shoulder. “That bow’s not much more use down here than my gun.” 

“That’s where you’d be wrong,” Clint says, and flicks a little switch on the grip next to his thumb. The length of the bow suddenly crackles and sparks with electricity, and Clint grins at James. “Leave anything lying around long enough, Tony’ll put an arc reactor in it.”

James stares at him. “You’re all insane,” he says. 

“Yup,” Clint agrees happily. “Superheroing, who’d do it except idiots and madmen?” 

James rolls his eyes, then pivots on one foot and presses his back against Clint’s again as the moloids press closer around them. Clint glances to the side where a group of them has broken off and swarmed the front of the train, clambering over it, crawling under it, scratching and clawing as they go. 

Speaking of superheroes… “I really thought they’d be here by now,” Clint says. “I wouldn’t have brought y–” 

At that moment, the bright, near-blinding light of the train’s headlamp abruptly cuts out, plunging them into sudden darkness. 

“Son of a bitch,” James curses. 

Clint wholeheartedly agrees. His eyes are pretty good in the dark, but such an abrupt change leaves him basically blinded. All that he knows is the eerie chittering of the moloids blurring in his ears, the buzzing of his electrified bow in his hands, and the warm, solid weight of James at his back. God, he hopes he hasn’t brought this dude out here to die or be maimed or something. That would just be the _worst_. Natasha is always telling him he needs to work on his moves, but really, he thought he had a _bit_ more game than plying a stranger with booze on the metro and then letting him get killed or seriously maimed by a horde of angry moloids. 

“I’m going to drop a flare in five, and then it’s on. Don’t get killed on me,” Clint says. 

James snorts. “Got a feeling I should be saying that to you.” He nudges Clint in the back with his elbow. “Anyway, I owe you a drink.” 

“Damn straight,” Clint says. 

“I’m _really_ not,” James says, and before Clint can laugh, he feels James launch himself at the moloids who, just at that very same second, lunge forward to overwhelm them. 

Clint throws the flare arrowhead at the ground in front of the train. It bursts to emit a bright light just as Clint turns his back to it. The moloids cringe back at the sudden light, some of them pausing to shield their eyes. Not all of them though; the rest start coming at him in waves. Clint thrusts forward with his bow, now essentially a long, electrified club, and it catches the closest three moloids under their chins, shocking them into a heap at his feet. He takes out the next three with a well-aimed repulsor blast from the mini reactor embedded in the grip, and then he swipes his feet under another two moloids so that they fall backwards and brain themselves on the train tracks. 

_Sweet_. And he’d been so skeptical when Tony wanted to add this feature. Shows what past!Hawkeye knew. 

Past!Hawkeye rarely has a single clue about anything, though, which Clint is mostly coming to terms with. For instance, not-so-distance past!Hawkeye had no clue that the random hot dude he was sharing a bottle of subway bourbon with was so – Well, the word that comes to mind is _efficient_. 

Clint has actually never seen anything like it. He glances over his shoulder, just once, just to make sure the guy is still alive, and he nearly loses a finger to a gnashing moloid because _hot damn_. James is tearing through the moloid horde like water; quick and efficient, a single punch here, a kick and flick there, each one immediately incapacitated and laid almost gently in the growing pile surrounding him. The moloids aren’t big creatures, and they’re skinny and withered, but still – James grabs them and tosses them like they’re feather-light, his gloved hand around their necks or wrists or arms. His face, or what Clint can see of it, is a mask of calm, ruthless focus. 

One thing’s for certain: this guy is no damn infantry man. If Clint didn’t know any better, he’d even hazard a guess at some sort of super power, it’s that impressive. But no, he knows all the super humans in New York, and he would’ve _remembered_ this guy. 

“Holy christ. Who _are_ you?” Clint says, staring as James grabs one moloid in each hand and bashes their heads together with a satisfying _clunk_. 

The calm mask breaks apart as James pauses briefly to grin at him, wolfishly, tossing his hair out of his face with a flick of his head. “James Buchanan Barnes,” he says. “Hi!” And then he punches a moloid in the face with his gloved hand so hard it flies back a good ten feet. 

And that – that rings a bell, somewhere at the back of Clint’s cavernous brain, but mostly what it does is… “I am so inappropriately turned on right now,” Clint tells him, whacking a moloid on its head with his bow. Ha! Whack-a-mole! 

“Save it for later, Hawkguy,” James advises, taking out another moloid with a small grunt and a knee to its ugly face. 

“Yep,” Clint agrees, as one intrepid moloid jumps from the top of train and lands on his back with its arms looping around his neck. “Ow, fuck, son of a bitch that hurt,” Clint gasps, his ribs screaming. Don’t these things have any respect for previous injuries? It’s just rude. 

With a sharp jab, Clint shoves his electrified bow up through the circle of the moloid’s arms, breaking its grip. It screeches right in his ear as it falls, and his hearing aid on that side struggles to recalibrate, throwing the sounds of the fight into a weird, dizzying ebb and flow. With a pained hiss, Clint whirls to deal another shocking blow to the moloid’s neck before it can right itself and attack again. 

“How many of these things are there?” James grits out. He’s made good progress, tearing his way through to the other side of the pack, thinning them out so that the largest group of them is between him and Clint. Even that basic level of strategy is beyond the moloids. They seem confused about who to attack first – meaning they largely go for whoever is closest. It makes them incredibly easy to predict. 

This random train guy may be some sort of genius. 

“Christ knows,” Clint replies. “I’m on twelve so far,” he reports, grappling with a moloid brandishing a broken glass bottle. He dodges a few thrusts before managing to connect the long end of his bow with the side of its head, delivering a hefty shock. Clint punches it down for good measure and it crumples to the floor with a satisfying wheeze.

“Fourteen,” James reports from across the tunnel. “Come on Hawkeye, keep up, I thought you were an Avenger.” 

“Give me a break,” Clint complains. “I’ve got four cracked ribs.”

“Thought they were just bruised,” James says wryly, punching out another moloid with ease, then parkouring up the curved side of the tunnel, leaping into a fucking backflip and taking out two more moloids with his elbows while landing on his goddamn feet. “Seventeen.”

“Fine, bruised, cracked, who the fuck is counting, they hurt like _hell_ , and seriously, man, who the fuck _are you_?Are you special ops? You gotta be special ops.” 

“Flare,” James says, tightly. Clint quickly tosses him one of the arrow heads he’d stashed in his pockets. He catches it out of the air one handed, barely even looking at it. “Like I told that guy on the train. I’m the stuff bad dreams are made of.” He throws the flare as far as he can in the opposite direction and it bursts, flooding their section of the tunnel with enough light to see by, though not so bright that it blinds them.

Clint snorts. “You’re sure _some_ kind of dreamy. Though you need some better material. You sound like _Batman_ , and that guy’s just a douche.” Two moloids leap up at him from either side. Clint hits one in the side of the neck with the curve of his bow, sweeps him around and uses the mini reactor to blast the other one in the face. They fall to his feet in a sad little pile. 

Clint huffs a rueful little laugh. That was an _awesome_ move – and still it was probably not even _nearly_ as cool as the least awesome thing James has done since stepping off the damn train.

Christ. Clint thought hanging out with a bunch of superheroes was rough on his ego, but this dude was a _random guy from the subway_ and he was putting Clint’s hard-earned secret agent credentials to _shame_.

“Wouldn’t know, never met him,” James says, administering a roundhouse kick to another moloid, then finishing it off with a jab to the neck. 

That brings Clint up short for a second. “Dude. Batman is a comic book character.” 

“Yeah? Well, so is Captain America.” 

“Sure,” Clint agrees, flicking the switch on his bow to stop the electrification. Zapping these things is fun, and all, but now they’ve thinned out the crowd a bit it’s time to pull out the stops and get it done, and thankfully, he’s got just the arrow for the job. “But that was like, after he was a real thing, not _before_.” 

“Eh. The end effect is about the same,” James says. He ducks a thrown rock deftly and then uses a nimble sweep of his feet to fell the little bastard that threw it at him. 

“Don’t think Cap would agree with you,” Clint says. A group of three moloids rush him from the shadows, and Clint’s sure he’s put at least one of these guys down already. Yup, definitely time for the big finale. He needs these guys to stay where they’re put.

“Sure about that?” James asks. 

Clint whacks one of the re-attacking moloids on the head for the sheer fun of it, and then cripples its legs for good measure. “I guess. I don’t know. I’ll ask him next time I see him.” He takes the other two out with a quick punch and kick combo, swearing through the pain. Yup, definitely time for this to be over now. 

“You do that,” James agrees. “Seriously, where are they all coming from? And where did that guy go?” 

“Who, Mole Man? Eh, Harvey never sticks around for this part,” Clint says, fumbling in his other pocket for one of the trick retractable arrows he’d brought out with him. “Prefers to let his minions do the fighting. I’m telling you, he’s got a Gollum replicator. Looks like we’ve got most of them down now, though, so… Watch out, incoming.” He nocks the trick arrow, takes aim and… lets fly. The arrow ricochets off the low bank of the tunnel wall, hits the ceiling directly above the largest group of remaining moloids, and explodes, covering them with sticky putty that glues them firmly in place. He does the same again for James’ and his piles of incapacitated moloids, and then flicks the switch on his bow to electrify it again. “Ha! Slimed! Get out of that one, suckers!” 

James, having narrowly avoided being slimed himself with a well executed backwards leap, snorts at him. “What are you, twelve?”

“In all the ways that matter,” Clint says, knocking out the last moloid standing with a swift whack to the head and a shock to the neck. “Whack-a-mole! Take that!” 

“Hopefully not _all_ the ways,” James leers. 

“Alright, in all the ways except the ones that make it creepy later when I let you take me home.” 

“Better,” James says. He stalks around the pile of puttied moloids between them, picks up the one Clint just knocked out and, left-handed, tosses it over his head to land on the sticky pile of felled foes. 

“Seriously, what the fuck?” Clint says, chest heaving as he gapes at James (from the exertion of the fight, obviously, not sheer raging attraction). “What the fuck _are_ you?”

A shadow passes over James’ face, the sort that makes Clint want to instantly swallow his own tongue, and he opens his mouth to apologise, which of course is when Iron Man shows up.

\-----------

“Aw man!” Tony’s voice, modulated by the Iron Man helmet, echoes through the tunnel from behind the train, completely disrupting Clint’s train of thought. “Did we miss it? No fair! I love whack-a-mole.” 

“You hate whack-a-mole!” Steve shouts at him. He sounds a bit breathless, even to Clint’s ears – he must be running to keep up with the Iron Man suit. “Hawkeye, status report!” 

“We’re fine, Cap! Zero casualties, civilian or moloid. Area contained and, uh _, sticky_.” 

“Who the hell is _we_?” Cap wants to know, as he and Iron Man round the corner pretty much neck and neck.

Clint opens his mouth to report – but James beats him to it. “Late to the fight again, Stevie?” he says with a smirk, which, wait, what the fuck? 

“What the – Bucky?!” Steve gapes, coming to a stop so abruptly Iron Man nearly flies into the back of him. A flash of relief plays over his face before deepening into absolute _fury_. “Where the _hell_ have you been?! And what the the _hell_ are you doing here?!”

“Wait, what?” Clint says, blinking between James and Steve because – “ _What_?!” 

Iron Man lands next to Clint and claps him on the shoulder. “See you finally met our newest member, Hawkguy. Hey, Robocop, how the hell’d you beat us here?” 

“No, seriously, guys, _what?!”_

“I went out,” James says, mulishly, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m allowed outside, right? Or do I need to be chaperoned?” 

“I’m not _saying –_ You didn’t leave a note or anything! We didn’t know where the hell you’d gone.” 

“I knew,” Tony says, helpfully, but Steve ignores him. For his part, Clint just stares, because his poor brain cannot make sense of whatever the hell _this_ is. He feels like it might, in fact, be leaking out of his ears. 

“I went to Brooklyn,” James says. “And then I was coming back. I was on the train.”

“You went to– Okay but– Christ, you can’t just _disappear_ like that– _”_

And _there_. There it is. Steve is making _the face_ at this guy, the awful one, the one where he’s worried _and_ disappointed, with just a tinge of righteous anger in there, the face that literally brings even the Hulk to his damn knees, and Steve only does _the face_ at people he really cares about, and that just – it just makes no sense. You gotta know someone to care about them, like that at least, which means…? Steve knows hot train dude? What?

“Guys, seriously, _what?!_ What is going on? You know each other? What?! Seriously, I just met this dude on the train– _”_

“What do you mean you just met him on the train?” Steve finally turns his attention to Clint, a frown on his face. It’s not quite the face of doom, thank god, but it’s not far off. “You didn’t recognise him? Didn’t you get the briefings?” 

Clint scratches the back of his head, wincing as his poor ribs protest. “Uh….” 

“Clint.” Steve narrows his eyes. “Did you read _any_ of the critical briefings we sent you on a regular basis while you were away?” 

“I mean,” Clint says, rubbing at the back of his neck. “They were really long, Cap. I was a bit busy.” 

Tony sniggers, pointing a finger at Steve. “I _told you_ no one would read them.” 

“You read them,” Steve points out. 

“Yeah, because you agreed that for every paragraph I finished, you’d take off a piece of clothing. Really, you definitely got the short end of the stick in that deal, Steve. Though afterwards, if you recall, I did make it up to you by giving you the long end–” 

“Oh, gross,” James says, wrinkling his nose. “Do you two really have to?” 

And suddenly, it clicks. “Holy shit. You’re – Oh my god.” Clint smacks his hand over his face. “Your best friend. The one whose new boyfriend was _a bit much_. That was _Steve_. You were talking about _Steve_!” 

“Yep,” James says, with a resounding _pop_ of the p. He looks so fucking smug, grey eyes dancing in the odd, flickering light of the flares. 

“Hey!” Tony objects, though he sounds pretty vague about it. 

Steve quirks an eyebrow at Tony. “Tony. Can you really blame him?” 

“My tower, my rules,” Tony says. “And my rules say Captain America should be naked at all times, what can I say.”

“Ugh,” Clint says, wincing. “Mom and Dad. Gross.” He wipes his hand over his face, processing. He feels the throbbing headache from earlier threatening to make a valiant return. “You’re – you’re _Bucky Barnes_ ,” Clint says, wishing fervently that Mole Man would pick now to do the decent thing and dig a great big hole underneath him and swallow him whole, because _of course he is_. Of course the random hot stranger he’d basically intoxicated and then conscripted was a goddamn legendary war hero. _Of fucking course_. “You’re – aren’t you dead?! I swear my 8th grade history teacher told me you were dead.” 

“Smooth, Hawkeye,” Tony says with a snort. 

“Not dead,” James confirms, with a little wave. “Hi.”

“But – what?” Clint blinks, looking to Steve for some sort of explanation. This may have been a mistake – Steve looks _pissed_. Pissed and _sad_ , oh Jesus, Clint didn’t think there could be a worse face on Steve than the face of doom but it turns out there is. 

“Yep, turns out we aren’t the only ones who still have a fully functioning war relic,” Tony says, dodging Steve’s elbow nimbly. “Hydra had one too. Hey, you’re a secret agent, you’ll know the stories – deadly Russian assassin, turns up at various points throughout history like some sort of ghost and can’t be put down?”

Clint stares at Tony for a long moment, because no. Nope. No. That cannot be a thing. He glances over at James, who just raises an eyebrow at him and shrugs.

Fuck, it totally is a thing. 

“You’re the goddamn _Winter Soldier_. You’re _Captain America’s best friend._ Oh my god. Why didn’t you _say something?!_ ” 

And James is just smirking at him, he is smirking at him like a smug bastard who knew all along that Clint was making a fool of himself and _enjoyed watching him do it_. 

“I mean. To be fair,” says James – _Bucky_ , holy shit, Bucky Barnes is alive and well and _has been flirting with Clint for hours_ what the _fuck_. “I didn’t realise who _you_ were until the driver told me. Although, I reckon it wouldn’t have taken me much longer to figure it out. You’re really terrible at stealth, you know.”

“Fuck you, I’m a secret agent,” Clint says, though without menace. He scrubs his hands through his hair and then over his face again. How is this his life, seriously? How?

“Hey secret agent,” Tony calls. “How do you unputty this putty? Seriously, what even is this stuff? Did I make this stuff? Gross, it’s _sticky_.”

“Gotta wait for it to dry,” Clint tells him. “Snaps right off. Wanna make sure they’re all contained or tied up or whatever first.” Steve nods and starts barking orders at Tony, who replies with appropriate levels of indignant snark and then does exactly what Steve tells him to anyway. 

Holy shit. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. This looks bad, Hawkeye, but you can still save it. It doesn’t have to be the literal most humiliating thing in the world unless you let it. You got this. Just – pretend like it never happened, forget about it, move on. No one needs to know you spent two hours chatting up Captain America’s best friend slash the most infamous assassin of all time without realising. Just start over. 

Yeah. 

It takes a monumental effort, but Clint manages – after just a few seconds, which is impressive, really, considering – to pull himself the fuck together, slide his hands from his face, and look Bucky in the eye, however sheepishly. “So, hey,” he says, stretching out a hand. “I’m Clint Barton aka Hawkeye, nice to meet you.” 

Bucky grins, shaking Clint’s proffered hand. “Bucky Barnes. _Charmed_.” The dip in his voice makes it sound like he _more_ than means it, and there is a glint in his eye that is almost hungry. Clint has to physically repress a shiver, almost hypnotised by those grey eyes. 

Yeah, fuck it. He is so, so screwed. _So_ screwed. Over Captain America’s _best friend_. Jesus Christ in a bucket. This is a disaster. Nat is right: he is a human trainwreck.

“Seriously, did _neither_ of you read my briefings?” Steve says. He is moving moloid after sticky moloid to the side of the tunnel – by hand, apparently. 

“They’re really fucking long, Stevie,” Bucky calls over his shoulder. He doesn’t let go of Clint’s hand. “And _boring_.”

“They are _critical briefings,_ ” Steve objects. “About our _team_. Who should _know things about each other_. There were _pictures_.” 

“Always did prefer to meet people for the first time in person, instead of hearing about them second hand,” Bucky says, finally dropping Clint’s hand with a squeeze, though he keeps their eyes locked firmly together, and that is _definitely_ a smirk playing on his lips, holy shit. “Makes a much more lasting impression.” 

“Clint definitely makes an impression, alright,” Tony says, snorting. “The kind you gotta have someone hammer out afterwards.”

“I dunno,” Bucky says. “I was kinda looking forward to the hammering.” 

Clint laughs, shaking his head, but he doesn’t look away from Bucky and Bucky is stepping closer and oh god, oh god, how is this his life? Is this for real? This can’t be for real. No way can Bucky Barnes seriously be making a move on him. Never mind that they’ve been flirting for hours, there’s no way he can be _serious_ about it now, after finding out they’re on the same team? Holy shit, they’re on the same team. 

Clint can’t decide if it’s a bad or a good thing that he does not even care. 

“Oh my god,” Tony says, faintly. “Steve. Steve, are you seeing this?” 

“I got eyes, Tony,” Steve says, though he sounds a bit incredulous. 

“Holy shit,” Tony continues. “Clint. CLINT! Did you, Clint Barton, human disaster, manage to pick up _the Winter Soldier_? On the _subway?_ While off-duty and posing as a _civilian_? You are the _worst_ civilian! I have seen you eat pizza from the floor! You tried to flirt with an agent at last year’s Christmas party and ended up falling head first in the punch bowl! You have like, negative game, it is a known fact, Bruce and I have entire equations–” 

“Hey!” Clint says, tearing his eyes away from Bucky to glare at Tony. “Fuck you, Stark, I’ve got game!” 

Bucky snorts, drawing Clint’s attention back to him. (It doesn’t take a lot of doing.) “You’ve got _somethin’_ ,” Bucky says, but his eyes are dancing. “Hey, does Steve know you go around sharing bourbon you found on the R train with total strangers at 1:30 in the afternoon?” 

Steve and Tony both give him an incredulous look. Well, Clint assumes that’s the look Tony’s giving him behind the Iron Man mask – although, you never know, with Tony it may equally be a look that says, ‘You are a hero among men and I congratulate you.’ 

“It was a _special occasion,_ ” Clint protests. 

“Oh yeah? What occasion was that?” Tony asks. 

“The occasion of me finding an entire bottle of bourbon on the train,” Clint says. _Duh_. “You’re the idiot that drank it with me, Barnes.” 

“Guilty,” Bucky says. He doesn’t look it one bit. 

Steve’s frown has intensified. It makes Clint irrationally want to scratch the back of his head. “So what you’re saying, Hawkeye, is you opened and drank from a bottle you _found_ on the _subway_ –” 

“It was sealed!” Clint protests. 

“It could have been _planted_ ,” Steve says. “You had no idea what was in it.” 

“I mean, I was pretty sure it was bourbon,” Clint says with a little shrug.

“Then,” Steve continues. “You intoxicated a complete stranger–” 

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I had like five sips, Stevie, you and I both know that ain’t doing shit–”

“He didn’t know that!” Steve counters. He continues: “Intoxicated a complete stranger and then! In a situation where you were outnumbered forty to one, left the only defensible position–” 

“Listen,” Clint interrupts, because yes, he makes some questionable decisions sometimes, but he’s not a _moron_ , he’s a highly trained, very high-ranking secret agent, an expert at combat logistics, and an Avenger, fuck you very much. “Have you _been_ on the metro lately, Steve? A train full of passengers is not defensible from the inside against forty plus assailants with sharp diggy claws, it is just _not_.” 

“You brought the complete stranger you’d been drinking questionable alcohol with _outside!_ As backup!” Steve says. Tony starts sniggering, which sounds very odd through his voice modulators and the incessant crackling interference in Clint’s shitty, shitty aids. Ugh.

“I was trying to _negotiate_!” Clint protests. “Taking a leaf out of your book, Cap! Harvey always likes to run his damn mouth, and he knows his army of Gollum clones can’t stand up to us worth shit. It was a safe bet.” 

Steve looks distinctly unimpressed. Clint sighs. 

“No backup from you on this?” he asks Bucky, who shrugs, kicking dirt up with the toe of his shoe. 

“In a way, all of this was Steve’s fault, anyway.” 

“Yeah? And how, exactly, d’you figure that, Buck?” Steve says, arms crossed over his chest again. The frown on his face is so deep, a moloid could probably make a nice little home in there. 

“If you’d never made us leave Brooklyn, this never would have happened,” Bucky says. Clint does a little _HA! Take that!_ dance – in his head, though, because he has learned _something_ in the past few years working with Steve. 

“Uh-huh. Or,” Steve says, picking his way back over to them. “This would’ve happened anyway and none of us would have been here to stop any civilians getting hurt.”

“So what are you complainin’ about, then?” Bucky asks, spreading his arms. “Look, situation resolved, attack thwarted, everyone’s fine, clean up’s on the way, let’s go home. I got a half a bottle’a bourbon left on that train with my name on it.” 

“What did they want, anyway?” Tony asks Clint, nudging one of the incapacitated moloid’s hands with his boot. 

Clint rolls his eyes. “The MTA forgot to pay Mole Man’s ransom this month,” he says. “I think he was going to take the train hostage.” 

“Fucking MTA,” Tony mutters. “Isn’t it only like, five hundred bucks or something ridiculous?” 

“Three hundred,” Clint agrees. “Which he seemed to think was a fortune.” 

“Yeah, he’s probably pretty much the same age as our resident fossils,” Tony says, nodding at Steve and Bucky. “Maybe even older. Last time he was using money in the real world, five dollars was a fortune.” 

“Oh, sure,” Steve says, sardonic. It’s no secret that he hates when Tony plays the ‘Steve is old and quaint’ card (or that he actually loves it because it gives them the chance to needle each other endlessly, which is pretty much the basis of their entire relationship). “Buck, just think’a all the egg creams and pennysweets we coulda bought ourselves back in the day with five whole dollars.” 

“Pal, I remember a few times you threatening to do some pretty drastic things for five extra bucks to our name,” Bucky says. “I ain’t playing.” 

And that’s – it’s too much, actually, for Clint. It’s one step too far. His brain is still reeling. Hot subway stranger he was totally going to give his number to is _Bucky Barnes_ who was born in 1918 and – yeah, just no. He cannot cope with this right now. His ribs fucking _hurt,_ and now that the adrenaline of the fight is fading the rest of his body is protesting again, his headache is coming back with a vengeance, and he’s about five seconds from tearing these terrible aids out of his ears and stomping them into teeny tiny parts even Tony Stark couldn’t reassemble. Clint is _beyond_ done. And the worst part is: He can’t even walk away, because this is his job, and the job isn’t _done yet_. 

Goddammit.

“Hey, guys, maybe settle this later?” he says, hopefully. “Piles of puttied moloids to deal with, whole train full of people to, I don’t know, reassure, or whatever?” 

“Legolas makes a good point,” Tony says. “What’re we doing with the weird subway oompa-loompahs?” 

“SHIELD are on their way for cleanup and containment,” Steve says. “And the MTA are sending their rescue and extraction team ASAP.” 

“So that’ll be another five hours,” Clint says with a grimace. Ughhhh. And also: Fucking ow. Surely he’s done his part. Right? Surely. 

It’s worth a shot, anyway. 

“Hey, you and Iron Man have this, right, Cap? I’m injured, I’m not even cleared for active duty, I'm supposed to be at the doctors—”

“Oh, sure, _now_ he wants the medics,” Tony snorts, his eyeroll almost audible. 

For his part, Steve is giving Clint with his most exasperated look. Luckily, it’s nowhere near as effective as the face of doom, largely because this one makes him look like a fed up housewife, which is just an inherently funny mental image. 

“Steeeeeeeve,” Clint wheedles. “C’mon, I did good, I tried to use my words, saved all those people from being kidnapped or whatever, and we didn't even seriously maim a single moloid.” Next to him, Bucky snorts.

“Real dignified, Hawkeye,” he says. Clint sticks his tongue out at him.

“Fine,” Steve says. “But Bucky’s going with you. And you're going straight to medical, or else you're on double press duty for the foreseeable.” 

“This guy?” Bucky asks with an incredulous wave of his hand in Clint’s general direction. “You let this guy talk to the press?” 

“Hey!” 

“He's surprisingly good at it,” Steve says with a shrug. “And also, he _hates_ it, so really it’s a win-win for me.” 

“You suck, Cap,” Clint says. “You too, Stark, I hear you laughing. I'm taking my dog and I'm getting out of here.”

“Hang on, you brought your dog on the subway?” Tony asks. “I mean, not that I have ever set foot on the subway, pretty sure I’d spontaneously combust or like, catch the plague, my immune system’s probably not quite up to dealing with the unwashed masses, but you know, still fairly sure they frown on passengers of the furry four-legged variety.” 

“He's a service dog,” Clint sniffs. “He helps me.”

“That dog is a lot of things,” Steve says slowly. “But _helpful_ …”

“Hey, fuck you all, leave me and my dog alone, what is this, everyone pile on Clint hour?” 

“Nah, we’re leaving that to Barnes for later,” Tony says, deadpan even as he reaches out a gauntlet to give Bucky a high five. Bucky just raises an eyebrow at him. Tony shrugs and then very nonchalantly high-fives himself. 

“Tony, leave them alone,” Steve admonishes. “Alright, we’ll handle clean up. You two get out of here. There’s a service entrance to the tunnels about a quarter of a mile back. At least, it was a service entrance, it now looks like a great big sign that says Tony Stark Was Here.”

“So, look for the perfectly good door blown to smithereens, then?” Clint asks. 

“Got it in one,” Steve says. 

“Hey, you can’t say it’s not efficient,” Tony says. 

There’s a tasteless joke in there somewhere, but it’s a testament to how totally wiped Clint is that he doesn’t go looking for it. “Later, Cap. Tony.” 

“Buck, make sure he goes straight to medical,” Steve says, pointing a finger at them. “I better not get back to find you haven’t been.” 

“Yes, Mom,” Bucky drawls. He tugs on Clint’s elbow. “Come on, Hawkeye. Let’s get your damn dog and get out of here.” 

\-----------

Lucky bounds up the length of the train and leaps at Clint as soon as they get the door open, planting his big paws on Clint’s shoulders and going to town on Clint’s face with his oversized tongue. 

“Ugh, Lucky,” Clint says, pushing weakly at the dog – though not, he admits, trying too hard to discourage him. “I’m fine, Lucky, seriously. What is this? Ugh, _stop_ , you’re embarrassing yourself.” 

He can hear Bucky behind him, chuckling. Ayesha, looking harried, boxes Clint off from the train full of curious eyes. “Is everything ok? The lights in here went out–” 

“Everything’s fine,” Clint tells her. “Crisis averted. Look, Cap’s here, he’ll come and do the big reassurance speech in a minute, I’m just – I’m gonna let him cover that, he’s much better than I am. Just sit tight.”

“We been sitting about as tight as we can for a half hour,” someone shouts at them from down the carriage. “What the fuck is going on? I have places to be!” 

Clint sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “It’s–“

“Hey, mister! We just saved your asses, think you could have a lick of patience?” Bucky shouts back, squeezing Clint’s shoulder quickly and pulling him back. “C’mon, Hawkeye, let’s go. Don’t owe them nothin’.” 

Clint nods and lets himself be drawn away with one last wave and attempted reassuring smile at Ayesha. “You know you get really Brooklyn when you’re angry?” 

“So I’ve been told,” Bucky says with a wry smile. He pauses infinitesimally and then leers at Clint. “Not the only thing that gets me real Brooklyn.” 

Clint can’t keep his bubbling laugh down. God. He still can’t quite tell whether Bucky means what he says, or if he just flirts on impulse, but either way, it’s pretty great, and so unexpected from James Barnes, literal war hero. Or, it would be, to anyone that hadn’t had to put up with Steve’s endless stories about his BFF Barnes while trapped in a quinjet for five or ten hours. To hear Steve tell it, there wasn’t a woman in France who didn’t go uncharmed by James Barnes, back in the day. Clint wonders if that extended to the men, too. 

“You always been such a sweet talker?” he asks as they trudge along the subway tunnel. Clint lights the way with the flashlight on his phone, keeping Lucky on a short leash while Bucky follows at his side. 

“Ever since I learned how to charm my Ma out of an extra swig of milk just by batting my eyes,” Bucky confirms. “Probably not so much the past 70 year or so, of course. Hydra aren’t so much about the silver tongue – they tend to prefer the iron fist approach, as a rule.” 

Clint focuses very hard on the ground in front of him. Wow. He really went there. 

“So what’re you, catching up on lost time?” 

“Figured it couldn’t hurt,” Bucky agrees gamely, knocking Clint’s elbow with his own. “Get back in practice. See if I still got it this side of the millennium. ’Sides, I never could resist a bottle of bourbon.” 

“I knew you were just using me for my booze!” 

Bucky laughs and knocks gently into Clint again – this time, Clint knocks him right back. 

“Pretty face didn’t hurt, either,” Bucky says, all smooth. 

“You may need your eyes checked,” Clint tells him. 

“I think I see just fine.” 

It’s the seriousness in his voice that has Clint flushing, almost bashful, and endlessly grateful for the cover of darkness in the tunnel as he fights down a truly undignified blush. The guy is clearly an incorrigible flirt, but… somehow this is suddenly not just about flirting. Which is crazy, right? They met two hours ago. Clint can’t think about that too hard, it makes his brain hurt. None of this still makes any sense. Hey, maybe he has a concussion after all. Except, no, if he had a concussion, Nat definitely would never have let him out of her sight long enough for him to get home to Brooklyn and have to come back again. 

Huh. Must actually be happening for real, then. What the fuck even is his life?

They find the emergency access easily – it’s hard to miss a giant hole blown in the side of the tunnel surrounded by the splintered remnants of what used to be a door. Say anything you want about Tony Stark, you can’t say he doesn’t commit. Destruction, at least.

There’s a brief struggle involving the logistics of hauling 70 pounds of golden retriever up a ladder, or at least there is in Clint’s head until Bucky takes one look at the ladder, another look at the dog, and then just … scoops him up with one arm and proceeds to climb the million and one rungs to the top, one-handed, without even breaking a sweat.

“Lemme guess,” Clint says, gasping for breath as he flops out of the top of the access shaft. “Hydra. Supersoldiered you?” 

“Hey, you’re not just a pretty face after all, are you?” Bucky teases, pulling him to his feet. He’s smiling, but there’s something like steel in his eyes. Clint winces.

“Ugh. Of course they did.” 

“They threw in a hefty dose of brainwashing and cryofreeze as well,” Bucky says. 

“Fucking hell, Barnes,” Clint says, blinking at him. Surely he can’t be expecting Clint to just casually brush all that off – except, maybe he is. Maybe it’s easier for him this way. What’d he say earlier? That his best friend ( _Steve_ , what the fuck) was driving him crazy, fretting about how well he’d acclimatized or whatever? Clint knows how that feels, at least – though in context, maybe not as severely, but _dear God_ was it obnoxious when all you wanted was for people to let you pretend like it never happened in peace. Sometimes all you needed to be able to move on was for other people to just _let you_. 

Right. No. He can do this. It may all blow up in his face later but – things blow up in his face on a pretty regular basis, he can handle it by now. If Bucky Barnes needs him to lighten the mood with bad jokes and terrible car-crash flirting – well, then, who is Clint Barton to deny him? 

No one, that’s who.

“Can’t say they stiffed you, then. You _definitely_ got the whole supervillain package. Three treatments for the price of one.”

“Four, actually,” Bucky says with a wry chuckle. He flexes his gloved left hand, and the long sleeve of his hoodie rides up just enough to flash a glint of metal. 

Clint stares at it for a hot second and then looks back up at Bucky. He doesn’t even have to pretend to look like his brain is leaking out his ears. “Iron fist _and_ a silver tongue,” he says. “That’s fucking hot.” 

Bucky blinks at him, almost taken aback, before his face splits in a grin and he laughs, long and hard.

\-----------

There’s a long, boring bit after that involving Bucky, Clint, and Lucky being ushered into a Rolls Royce by a very determined Happy who would brook no arguments about ‘No, really, we can walk from here, look, we can see the Tower from here, it’s only like 30 blocks.’ The three of them sit in the back, gripping handles and upholstery and the leg of Clint’s jeans, respectively (the latter in a very slobbery mouth). Clint has to count out his breaths for the entirety of the ten minute ride. 

As soon as Happy delivers them into the Tower, a horde of doctors appears – well, okay, four doctors, which still seems like overkill – to whisk Clint away in the direction of the Tower’s super-special superhero clinic. Clint barely hears Bucky say he’ll catch up with him later in the Avengers’ suite. He manages to shout that Lucky still needs his damn walk, but he can’t be sure Bucky heard, because the elevator doors close between them with a resounding thud. 

After several hours of poking, prodding, and letting Stark and Banner’s crazy sci-fi love children medbots scan him seven ways from Sunday, Clint arrives in the Avengers suite wrapped in gauze (unnecessary), clutching a bottle of painkillers (very necessary), and entirely exhausted (unsurprising). 

“I need a fucking _drink_ ,” he announces to the empty room, making a bee-line for Tony’s wet bar, the one that looks out over the skygarden and Manhattan beyond. It is, Clint will admit, stunningly beautiful. He’s always liked being high up, and this is the highest residential floor in the city. Both the sniper and the agent in him appreciate that small fact greatly. He’s never quite been sure whether it’s because of Tony’s need to have the biggest and best of everything – or because something in Tony also needs to know that there’s no one breathing down his neck. Probably it’s both. 

One good thing the doctors _did_ do was give him the hearing aids Tony meant for him to have – 100% arc reactor free this time, he’d checked. They’re perfect, of course, with fidelity and clarity probably better than what he’d had before some jackass boxed his eardrums out. It’s a relief, and not just because of how much it helps his headache. The thing he hates the most about being deaf (okay, one of several things) is being snuck up on; he’s jumpy sometimes, especially after missions. With these things, he can hear the rush of the elevator before it even reaches the floor, and he can even make out the different footsteps: four quick, light, excited ones, and two heavier, calmer, more intent. 

Lucky trots up to Clint and noses at his hand, happily accepting the treat Clint digs out of his pocket for him and a scritch on the ears before scampering off to find the toys Tony pretends he doesn’t purposefully hide in strategic places around the penthouse for when they visit. 

“Say,” Bucky says, drawing Clint’s attention to him. “What’s a handsome guy like you doing in a place like this?” He sidles up next to Clint and leans with one elbow on the bar, not making any attempt to hide the way his eyes travel up and down Clint’s body in long, assessing sweeps. He’s changed out of his hoodie into a plain, black v-necked Tee, tight across his chest and abs. Clint pivots a half step and takes his time returning his gaze – dragging his eyes up over tight black jeans, lingering blatantly on the brilliant, shining silver arm. 

“That’s some impressive hardware. Did Stark cream his pants when he clapped eyes on that thing?” 

Bucky sniggers. “Steve had to restrain him. Bodily, I assume. There was mention of handcuffs – I stopped listening after that.” He grimaces. “They really are a lot.” 

“Disgusting,” Clint agrees. He hums thoughtfully, reaching into the cabinet and coming up with a couple glasses. “Y’know, for all Steve’s storytelling about you, you think it would’ve come up that you played for our team. Both teams? Whatever.” 

“I’ve always supported equal opportunities,” Bucky says with a laugh. “Just couldn’t always be vocal about it. Say, I never got the chance to chat a fella up in public before. Back in our day it was all pretty much done in code. How’d I do?”

Clint pours them a couple fingers of Tony’s very expensive whiskey each and pretends to think it over. “I’d give you a solid seven out of ten.” 

“Only?! Dammit, Barton, that was some of my best material. While fighting bad guys! Don’t I get extra points for the bad guys?” 

“Eight out of ten, then. I’m deducting points for the bit where you blatantly lied–” 

“I didn’t lie! Well, okay, a lie of omission, maybe,” Bucky concedes. “That doesn’t count. Steve does it _all the damn time_ , and he’s Captain America!”

“Hate to break it to you, Buck, but Captain America is and always has been a filthy, dirty liar. His pants are on fire so big you can see it from space. Nope, points still deducted. And then,” Clint says, because in for a nickel, in for a dime. “There’s the bit where you still haven’t kissed me. Definite negative points right there.” 

Bucky’s eyes darken; he takes half a step forward, bringing him from ‘next to Clint’ to ‘right in Clint’s space’. 

“Can I make that up in extra credit?” he asks. He smells of mint body wash, gun oil, and metal. Every time he moves, the plates of his arm shift and shimmer in the light. Clint flicks his eyes up and catches Bucky’s gaze, holds him there a minute, teasing, before he reaches out and hauls him in with a handful of the neck of his shirt. 

If Clint thought that a guy from the forties would kiss like a gentleman, he was dead wrong. Bucky’s lips part under his almost instantly, and he wastes no time at all getting his hands wherever he wants them, one sliding fingers into Clint’s hair while the other curls possessively over Clint’s hip. Up close, the guy is huge – Clint isn’t exactly _short_ , but Bucky is six feet of muscle hopped up on superserum. He feels caught, held, _enveloped_ , and it just _does_ something to him that makes his knees feel about as solid as jello. He may or may not let out a manly whimper as Bucky deepens the kiss, sliding his hand over the small of Clint’s back and using it to pull their bodies flush. Clint grasps for purchase, a hand on Bucky’s shoulder and another around his back, feeling the shifting planes of muscle there as Bucky leans over him and does things to his mouth that are probably illegal in several states to this very day. 

Maybe it’s because he’s tired and achey and his defences are low, or maybe it’s because they’ve had an entire day of build-up to this, but Clint can’t remember ever kissing someone he barely knows and having it feel so instantly _right_. And he has, admittedly, kissed quite a few people he barely knows. Maybe it’s the other thing: He hasn’t really kissed anyone and had it feel right. Always something at the back of his mind – a niggling question: Why are they doing this? Why here? Why with me? 

Thinking about it, Bucky made it pretty clear from the moment they laid eyes on each other why they’re doing this, and then spent the next few hours reiterating his point. Even once he realised who Clint was, he didn’t hesitate even for a second. And now here they are four hours later, standing together on top of the world after sharing a bottle of bourbon, smashing a moloid uprising, and saving the day, and that – yeah. That just makes sense. The rest of it – the fact that they’re colleagues now, on the same team; Bucky’s past, the horrible, unspeakable things he’s survived; the fact that he’s almost 100 years old and that Clint had a teddy bear named after him when he was five – none of that matters. Well it _does_ , but right now, it’s all in the abstract. 

Here and now, what matters is this: the warmth of Bucky’s skin under Clint’s hands; the hard press of their chests together; the silk of his hair falling across Clint’s cheek. How when Clint presses forward, Bucky retreats, lets him in without hesitation. These things are concrete. These things matter. The instant and intense mutual attraction is a huge part of it, but also, and shut up, he knows this is soppy and gross, but: they just _work_ together. He can tell. They’re going to be _amazing_. 

They’re so wrapped up in each other (literally, with Bucky’s hand up under the hem of Clint’s shirt, flesh hand spanned across the middle of his shoulders, and Clint’s leg slotted between Bucky’s) they must both miss the _whoosh-ding_ of the elevator arriving on the floor because Natasha manages to get _right up behind them_ before either of them realise she’s there. 

“Well, this is new and terrifying,” she says loudly and they jump apart as if electrocuted – though not too far, because now he’s got his hands on him, Clint isn’t going to stop touching Bucky anytime soon, not for anyone. 

“Holy shit,” he says, chest heaving. “Nat. Jesus. A little warning?” 

“Isn’t there a rule about PDA in the lounge?” she asks, one eyebrow arched as she reaches past them and grabs a beer from the perpetual ice-bucket Tony ‘drunkvented’ last month. “JARVIS?” 

“Certainly, ma’am,” JARVIS says from the ceiling or where-the-fuck ever he … lives? Exists? _Is?_ “Rule 8.19 of the Avengers Bylaws states that ‘There shall be no public displays of affection in the shared lounge lasting longer than five seconds between any two or more parties.’ Addendum 1.1 states that ‘any public displays of affection involving a supersoldier are exempt from the five second rule, so shut your damn hole, Rhodes, and wait there a few minutes while I show my man a proper welcome.’” 

“Ha!” Clint cries, pointing a finger at Natasha. “Supersoldier exemption clause! So there!” 

Bucky grimaces. “God, they’re gross,” he says, pressing his face into Clint’s hair. 

“So gross,” Clint agrees, sliding his arm around Bucky’s waist and giving him a little squeeze of commiseration. It seems to be appreciated, going by the way Bucky drapes his arm over Clint’s shoulders. Or maybe he’s just staking his ground? Whatever, Clint is _not_ going to complain. 

Nat is watching them with her thoughtful eyes, which could either mean she’s plotting to tear them apart or planning their wedding. Clint offers her a hopeful grin. She narrows her eyes at him.

“This could go horribly wrong,” she says. 

“Yup,” Clint agrees. 

“This could mess with the team.” 

“Yup.” 

“This could and probably will blow up in your face.” 

“Yup,” Clint says again, with a shrug. He looks up at Bucky, who offers him an eyeroll, which – yep. This is what he means: They just _work_. “Worth it.” 

Natasha nods, just once. “Alright then.” She pulls a tablet out from – god knows where, actually, swipes it open and hands it over. “You’re a meme now, by the way,” she says. “Congratulations.” And then, tipping them a little salute with her beer, she practically dematerialises in front of their eyes. 

Bucky blinks after her and then shakes his head. “Do I wanna know what a meme is?” 

“Uh, depends. How much do you know about the internet?” 

“I know it is for cat videos, porn, and hacking into top-secret government databases,” Bucky says. 

Clint laughs. “You’re not wrong. I’m gonna assume you’ve used it for at least one of those three things.” 

“Cat videos,” Bucky agrees with a smirk. 

The tablet’s browser is open to one of those local news blog and gossip sites that Tony likes to do dramatic readings from over pizza and beer on Tuesday nights. Stories pitched and submitted by the average New Yorker, ranging from the incredible to the literally impossible, usually with a healthy dash of human interest and/or shock value. Tony’s favourite kinds of articles are the ones from people who have spotted Steve trying to be stealthy and blend in with the public while do-gooding about town, as if people wouldn’t recognise the massive 6’3’’ blonde dude with the approximate dimensions of a Dorito on legs and the insuppressible need to ensure Justice and Freedom wherever he treads. 

Clint’s been in a few of the stories as well, though almost always while in uniform. Fact of the matter is, he’s just not recognisable – and thankfully, in this picture, you can’t actually see his face. It is definitely him, though, turned sideways so his hood falls mostly across his face, holding a bottle of cheap bourbon out to Bucky. 

The embedded tweet attached to the photo reads: “This guy just found a bottle of bourbon under his subway seat and now these 2 strangers popped it open & are drinking it. This is peak NYC.” 

“Peak NYC?” Bucky snorts. “Sure, lady.” 

“I dunno,” Clint says, rubbing his chin. “Subway booze, MTA fuck up, subverting a bunch of misguided baddies bent on destruction–” 

“Only thing those things were gonna destroy were their own nails,” Bucky huffs. “All that scrabbling.” He shivers. 

“Meet-cute, rooftop drinks,” Clint continues, nudging Bucky with his hip. “Kisses with a view. You gotta admit, it’s been a pretty fucking peak New York kinda day, Buck.” 

“Oh sure,” Bucky says, using his arm around Clint’s shoulders to reel him back in so they end up face to face, sharing air. “Those small town blues of yours melting away?” 

“You bet,” Clint agrees, nudging their noses together, one hand sliding up the nape of Bucky’s neck to tangle in his hair. “Making a brand new start of it.” 

“I’m gonna get you one of those awful shirts,” Bucky threatens, sliding both his hands down Clint’s back, winding up with two handfuls of Clint’s ass. 

“I heart NYC,” Clint says, and Bucky grins against his lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't seen it already, [this is the tweet/story that started it all](http://gothamist.com/2017/02/27/peak_nyc_strangers_find_share_bottl.php). 
> 
> I'd also like to say that the MTA is actually brilliant ... while also being a bit of nightmare. Just a little bit.


End file.
